Key points:
- Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox for defamation after making false claims that the ballot-counting machines were manipulated
- Fox admitted making “false” claims about the voting machine company
- The case was settled for $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion)
Voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems and Fox have reached a settlement in a high-profile defamation case in the United States.
Dominion CEO John Poulos said the case was settled for $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion) and that Fox had admitted telling lies about his company.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and the customers that we serve. Nothing can ever make up for that,” Mr Poulos said.
The resolution was announced at the 11th hour, with a 12-person jury selected in the Delaware city of Wilmington on Tuesday morning, US time, and the case poised to kick off with opening statements on Tuesday afternoon.
In a statement, Fox admitted making “false” claims about the voting machine company.
“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said.
“This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.
“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
At issue in the lawsuit was whether Fox was liable for airing the false claims that Denver-based Dominion’s ballot-counting machines were used to manipulate the 2020 US election in favour of Democrat Joe Biden over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
Dominion argued that these on-air claims caused the company “enormous and irreparable economic harm”.
Dominion was seeking more than $US1.6 billion ($2 billion) in damages from Fox after the network aired multiple false statements about voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, with Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis presiding over the case.
Judge Davis had ordered a one-day trial postponement on Monday before the delay on Tuesday, apparently as the two sides hammered out a deal.
Judge Davis excused the jurors, telling them the parties had resolved the case.
The deal spares Fox the peril of having some of its best-known figures called to the witness stand and subjected to potentially withering questioning.
This would have ranged from executives including Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul who serves as Fox Corp chairman, and Fox CEO Suzanne Scott as well as on-air hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.
The decision to settle also followed a ruling by the judge that Fox could not invoke free speech protections under the US Constitution in its defence.
Multiple lawsuits over election coverage
Fox News is the most-watched US cable news network, according to Nielsen.
The primary question for jurors was to be whether Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregarded the truth, the standard of “actual malice” that Dominion must show to prevail in a defamation case.
In February court filings, Dominion cited a trove of internal communications in which Mr Murdoch and other Fox figures privately acknowledged that the vote-rigging claims made about Dominion on-air were false.
Dominion said Fox amplified the untrue claims to boost its ratings and prevent its viewers from migrating to other media competitors on the right including One America News Network, which Dominion is suing separately.
Adding to the legal risks for Fox, another US voting technology company, Smartmatic, is pursuing its own defamation lawsuit seeking $US2.7 billion in damages in a New York state court.
Fox reported nearly $US14 billion in annual revenue last year.
Fox had argued that claims by Donald Trump and his lawyers about the election were inherently newsworthy and protected by the constitution’s first amendment.
Judge Davis ruled in March that Fox could not use those arguments, finding its coverage was false, defamatory and not protected by the first amendment.
Dominion in 2021 sued Fox, contending that its business was ruined by the false vote-rigging claims that were aired by the influential American cable news outlet known for its roster of conservative commentators.
The trial was to have been a test of whether Fox’s coverage crossed the line between ethical journalism and the pursuit of ratings, as Dominion alleges and Fox denies.
Fox had portrayed itself in the pre-trial skirmishing as a defender of press freedom.
Election-rigging claims ‘really crazy’ and ‘damaging’
The complaints referenced instances in which Trump allies including his former lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News to advance the false allegations about Dominion.
Dominion obtained internal communications and testimony from Mr Murdoch and other Fox News executives and commentators.
Mr Murdoch internally described the election-rigging claims as “really crazy” and “damaging” but declined to wield his editorial power to stop them and conceded under oath that some Fox hosts nonetheless “endorsed” the baseless claims, Dominion told the court in a filing.
When Mr Murdoch watched Mr Giuliani and Ms Powell make their claims about Dominion on November 19, he characterised them to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott as “terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear”, according to the filing.
Under questioning from a Dominion lawyer, Mr Murdoch testified that he thought everything about the election was on the “up-and-up” and doubted the rigging claims from the very beginning, according to Dominion’s filing.
Asked if he could have intervened to stop Mr Giuliani from continuing to spread falsehoods on air, Mr Murdoch responded, “I could have. But I didn’t,” the filing said.
Source: ABC News
