The legal problems still overshadowing Fox News after its Dominion settlement
In a last-minute settlement on Tuesday, Fox agreed to pay voting equipment company Dominion US$787.5m, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.
According to analysts, while the settlement amount is incredibly costly, Fox has avoided the more damaging spectacle of a trial and a public apology.
But it still faces a number of legal challenges over the coming months.
A global election technology company headquartered in London, Smartmatic, lodged a defamation suit against Fox in February 2021. The complaint’s striking opening sentence read: “The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election … ”
Like Dominion, Smartmatic is suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, but the company’s lawsuit has so far attracted only a fraction of the attention.
On paper, Smartmatic’s suit could be the more dangerous: it is demanding damages of $2.7bn compared with Dominion’s claim for $1.6bn.
In March, the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The company argues that that Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory and that hosts and guests broadcast 100 false statements: among them, that Smartmatic was involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states when in fact it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.
Claims broadcast on Fox described Smartmatic as having
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