Fox Corporation is set to face Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit, as a New York judge ruled against the motion to dismiss the claims made by Smartmatic against Fox News’ parent company. However, the judge also ruled that Smartmatic must address Fox’s counterclaims, asserting that the defamation claims are an attempt to suppress free speech. This ruling further escalates the long and costly legal battle between Smartmatic, a voting company accused of election rigging despite being used in only one U.S. district in 2020, and Fox News and Corp., who claim to have provided coverage of significant events and individuals during the 2020 election.
Smartmatic originally filed the lawsuit against Fox and some of its hosts and guests in 2021. It is one of several ongoing lawsuits related to election conspiracy theories. Fox’s legal team had sought to dismiss the claims against Fox Corp., arguing that the parent company, then led by executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, should not be held legally responsible for Fox News’ coverage.
However, New York County Supreme Court Justice David Cohen disagreed with Fox’s argument and denied the motion to dismiss in a ruling on Wednesday. In his decision, Justice Cohen wrote that “plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged in their amended complaint that Corp. employees played an affirmative role in the publication of the defamation at issue.” He also noted that the plaintiffs have “sufficiently alleged that Corp. employees acted with malice by purposefully and deliberately publishing knowingly false stories about plaintiffs in order to benefit. Corp.’s financial interests.”
Simultaneously, Justice Cohen denied Smartmatic’s motion to dismiss Fox News and Fox Corp.’s counterclaims, in which the media company argued that Smartmatic’s claims were designed to stifle free speech. The judge explained that this specific argument has not yet been addressed in any court.
It is worth mentioning that last year, Fox Corp. reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, agreeing to pay $787.5 million to resolve similar, though separate, claims just before they were scheduled to go to trial.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” said a Fox spokesperson in a statement. “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.”
Source: F5 Magazine