Major Setback in Fox News’ Defamation Case

Dominion Defends Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election: A Judge’s Judgment on Fox News’ Defamation Claims

Unless there is an out-of-court settlement – which is always possible – Davis’ ruling means jurors will have to decide whether Fox News defamed Dominion by repeatedly promoting false claims that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.

The defamation lawsuit is arguably the most consequential case in the last few years. Fox has argued that a loss will eviscerate press freedoms, and some scholars agree that the bar should remain high to prove defamation. According to analysts, holding Fox accountable for airing lies won’t pose a threat to objective journalists in the first place.

Both sides of the case asked the Delaware Superior Court Judge for a ruling in their favor. But after thousands of pages of filings and exhibits, and a series of courtroom clashes in Wilmington, Davis decided that the case should go to trial.

The on-air statements, from various Fox News hosts after the 2020 election, had accused Dominion of rigging the election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

“We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a statement.

“The context supports the position that the statements were not pure opinion when they were made by newscasters holding themselves out to be sources of accurate information,” Davis wrong in his 130-page ruling.

Texts and emails released as part of the lawsuit show how Fox employees privately mocked election fraud claims made by Donald Trump, even as the network amplified them to appease viewers.

Donald Trump encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax after attacking Fox News. And, in the days and weeks after the presidential contest had been called, they did just that. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership, leading to panic inside the building and prompting network leadership to embrace the election denialism that enveloped a large part of the Republican Party.

The lawyers who built the defamation case for Dominion used to send emails about how Murdoch shapes his news organizations.

A Fox News producer has filed lawsuits in New York and Delaware, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case.

Reply to the Comment by Lou Dobbs on “Electoral Fraud in the U.S. and the Foes of Electronic Voting”

For example, in a “Lou Dobbs Tonight” broadcast on Nov. 24, 2020, Mr. Dobbs said: “I think many Americans have given no thought to electoral fraud that would be perpetrated through electronic voting; that is, these machines, these electronic voting companies including Dominion, prominently Dominion, at least in the suspicions of a lot of Americans.”

A law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Utah says that the judge disagreed with some of the arguments made by Fox.