Fox reaches $787M settlement with Dominion moments before opening of defamation trial
Kaelan Deese
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Fox News agreed to settle a voting machine maker’s defamation lawsuit alleging the network aired false claims that it rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Donald Trump.
The network reached the settlement with Dominion Voting Systems just after a jury for the trial in Wilmington, Delaware, was selected on Tuesday and just before opening statements. Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said the settlement was just over $787 million, according to a press conference.
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Before 4 p.m., the judge called the jury into a courtroom after a long day of delay to tell them they were dismissed. “The case has been resolved and it’s been resolved because of you,” Judge Eric Davis told the jury Tuesday.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said at the press conference.
The suit alleged current and former Fox hosts including Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Jeanine Pirro offered guests such as attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani a platform to make repeated defamatory statements claiming the company used computer algorithms to move votes away from Trump to then-candidate Joe Biden.
The company initially sought $1.6 billion in the defamation lawsuit from the cable news network.
Fox contended it was reporting on matters of national importance and that its broadcasts were protected as free speech under the First Amendment.
Fox News released a statement acknowledging “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the network wrote in its full statement. “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.”
The settlement comes months after courtroom disputes between the two parties, which had been viewed as a potentially precedent-changing moment for defamation law that could have altered the financial health and public reputation of one of the country’s largest and most successful cable news networks.
By agreeing to settle, Fox will shield itself from what may have been a potentially revealing trial of several weeks focusing on internal quibbles among staff around the time of the 2020 election.
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Before the settlement, the judge previously ruled that the network’s owner, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch, could not avoid testimony during the trial.
“If Dominion wants to bring them live, they need to do a trial subpoena and I would not quash it and I would compel them to come,” Davis said earlier this month in a public hearing.