The father of a 6-year-old old boy killed in Sandy Hook has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors who penned a book claiming that the 2012 mass shooting never happened.
The Associated Press reported that a Wisconsin judge issued a summary judgment in favor of Noah Pozner’s father and against “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook” authors James Fetzer and Mike Palacek. As part of a separate settlement, the book’s publisher, Moon Rock Books, agreed to stop selling the book.
“My face-to-face interactions with Mr. Pozner have led me to believe that Mr. Pozner is telling the truth about the death of his son,” Moon Rock Books’ principal officer Dave Gahary said Monday. “I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology to the Pozner family.”
Fetzer and Palecek edited the controversial 2016 book which accused father Leonard Pozner of providing a fraudulent copy of his slain son’s death certificate—a claim Fetzer repeated on his blog, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Noah was the youngest victim of the massacre in Connecticut that left a total of 27 children and adults dead. Fetzer, a philosophy professor from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, has claimed that the mass shooting was orchestrated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to give the Obama administration leeway to enact gun control measures, the news outlet reported.
A copy of Noah’s birth certificate was printed in “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” During the four-hour trial, Leonard’s attorney, Jacob Zimmerman, explained that a difference in processing by state and local municipalities explained why a state file number wasn’t on the death certificate.
The State Journal reported that Zimmer provided an original copy of Noah’s birth certificate to the court and accused the authors of making inflammatory claims based on “copies of copies of copies that they found somewhere out on the internet.” While Fetzer conceded that his initial reasons for challenging the birth certificate were wrong, he asserted that Leonard’s lawsuit was an attempt to silence him and other Sandy Hook skeptics.
Pozner is the lead plaintiff in several of nine cases filed against Sandy Hook “truthers” in federal and state courts in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin, according to the Associated Press. Damages for the latest judgment will be determined at a trial scheduled for October.
[Featured image: AP Photo/Jessica Hill]
