Fox News & Dominion Reach Settlement In Defamation Lawsuit Over False Election Rigging Claims
18.04.2023 - 20:21
/ deadline.com
Fox News has settled Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned organization, averting a lengthy, expensive and certain to be embarrassing trial.
“The parties have resolved their case,” Delaware Superior Court judge, Eric M. Davis just told the court, offering no details.
The settlement was made public right before Wall Street ceased trading for the day. No details of the deal have been made public, yet.
Following a flurry of post-lunch break activity Tuesday in and out of Judge Davis’s chambers, the agreement comes soon after the 12-person jury was seated, a special master had been appointed to probe Fox compliance. Opening statements were set to begin late this morning Pacific time, but that plan went awry as spectators sat in the courtroom for nearly two hours with no idea what was going down.
Though a settlement is nothing new to Fox and Murdoch-owned entities, with nothing unveiled at this late hour, things seemed to be going full steam to a six-week trial. With the flood of scathing and hypocritical internal correspondence between execs and Fox hosts like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham over Donald Trump and his false claims of the 2020 election being stolen that had come out in recent weeks, it looked like the company was eager to make a deal with the private equity firm backed Dominion and spare the 92-year-old Murdoch having to testify
A hint of that seemed to be on the horizon in the past 48 hours.
On Sunday night, just over 12 hours before jurors were to began being picked, Judge Davis, suddenly delayed the start of the trial to Tuesday. The move immediately triggered speculation that both sides were engaged in some kind of huddle to reach a