BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 24: Rupert Murdoch attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images)
On Thursday, a New York appeals court ruled to reject Fox Corporation’s efforts to be dismissed from the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed against them by Smartmatic.
In 2021, Smartmatic, a voting technology company, sued Fox News and Fox Corporation for the news guests and hosts baselessly accused them of rigging the 2020 election. In the lawsuit, Smartmatic accused Rupert Murdoch, owner of the media giant, as well as his son, Lachlan Murdock, a Fox Corporation CEO, of intentionally using the news source as a “disinformation campaign to win back its audience.”
Despite reporting unfounded and debunked conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged, Fox News has denied any unethical behavior. Fox has maintained that the network cannot be held responsible for repeatedly hosting Trump’s attorneys, claiming it was a journalistic effort.
Fox News has made numerous requests to dismiss the case, all of which have been unsuccessful.
A Fox representative responded to the recent ruling, “We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial…as a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
The New York appeals court’s decision was influenced by a similar legal case overseen by a Delaware judge, in which Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox over the airing of 2020 election lies. In 2023, Fox paid over $787 million to settle that lawsuit, becoming the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history.
The New York ruling stated, “Here, consistent with the Dominion decisions, we find that the allegations in the first amended complaint relating to Fox Corporation directing the other defendants to undertake a disinformation campaign… sufficiently allege Fox Corporation’s ‘direct liability’ for the challenged defamatory statements.”
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