Wisconsin Jury Awards Sandy Hook Father $450,000 in Defamation Verdict Against Conspiracy Author

On December 14, 2012, a gunman killed twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Leonard Pozner's six-year-old son was among the children who died that morning. In the years that followed, organized online conspiracy networks claimed the massacre had been staged, targeting surviving families with harassment and death threats.

James Fetzer, a retired University of Minnesota Duluth philosophy professor, gave those theories a published form. His 2015 book "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook" argued that the shooting was a federal government hoax orchestrated to build support for gun-control legislation. One chapter focused directly on Pozner, claiming that a copy of his son's death certificate he had posted online was a counterfeit and that Pozner had therefore committed a crime under Connecticut law. The accusations spread rapidly, intensifying the harassment Pozner already faced.

Pozner filed a defamation suit in Dane County Circuit Court in 2018. In June 2019, Judge Frank Remington granted Pozner summary judgment on the liability question, ruling that Fetzer's statements about the death certificate were false as a matter of law and constituted defamation. Co-defendant Michael Palacek, who had co-authored the book, settled separately and issued a public apology. Fetzer elected to fight the damages phase at trial.

Genevieve Zimmerman of Meshbesher & Spence, working alongside attorney Jake Zimmerman, handled the case pro bono. The two attorneys also paid litigation costs out of pocket, with Meshbesher & Spence providing firm support throughout. Because liability had already been resolved at the summary-judgment stage, the jury heard only the damages phase. The attorneys presented expert testimony establishing that Pozner suffered from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, materially worsened by years of vilification and physical threats traceable to Fetzer's published accusations.

The jury returned a verdict of $450,000 on October 15, 2019. Fetzer appealed, contesting the defamation ruling and raising several procedural arguments. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the circuit court's decision in 2021. Post-judgment collection proceedings continued into 2023, when the same appellate court upheld a turnover order directing Fetzer to transfer the copyrights to four editions of the book and related website domains toward satisfying the outstanding judgment.