defamation lawsuits

The stunning settlement emerged just as opening statements were supposed to begin, abruptly ending a case that had embarrassed Fox News over several months and raised the possibility that network founder Rupert Murdoch and stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would have to testify publicly. Pictured: Attorneys representing Dominion Voting Systems speak at a news conference outside New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del., after the defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News was settled just as the jury trial was set to begin, Tuesday, April 18. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Dominion had asked for $1.6 billion in arguing that Fox had damaged its reputation by helping peddle phony conspiracy theories about its equipment switching votes from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. “The truth matters. Lies have consequences,” said Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson in a news conference outside the courthouse after the announcement.

The scheduled trial start comes after a one-day delay granted by the judge overseeing the case, a reprieve that gave the sides time to see if they could work out a settlement. Jury selection and opening statements had been scheduled for Monday in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. The Denver-based company aims to hold Fox accountable for airing false allegations of election fraud that continue to roil U.S. politics.

Without citing a reason, the Delaware judge overseeing a voting machine company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News announced late Sunday that he was delaying the start of the trial until Tuesday. The trial, which has drawn international interest, had been scheduled to start Monday morning with jury selection and opening statements.

Big questions loom in the $1.6 billion trial centered on false election fraud claims Fox aired about a voting technology company.

With jury selection closed to the media and public, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis announced by Thursday afternoon that the interview process had produced a large enough pool from which to choose 12 jurors and 12 alternates for the defamation trial brought by Dominion Voting Systems. The seating of jurors will begin Monday morning, followed by opening statements from lawyers.

The longtime magazine columnist who accused former President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s can use the Access Hollywood tape as evidence at trial in her defamation case, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Manhattan judge also rejected Trump’s effort to block the columnist, E. Jean Carroll, from using the testimony of two other women who previously accused him of sexual assault.

There is no question that Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has embarrassed the network. But what matters legally speaking is whether Dominion can prove Fox meets the standard for defamation. And it’s worth combing through the evidence on that thus far.

Quin Hillyer: “In Fox News’s defense against the well-publicized defamation lawsuits by voting machine companies, Fox needs to remind a jury that there’s a large distinction between what is unethical and what is illegal. If Fox eventually needs to appeal an unfavorable jury decision, the network should freely acknowledge that many of its shows are opinion rather than news because libel law gives more protection to opinions.”

The New York Times asked a judge on Wednesday to unseal some legal filings that contain previously undisclosed evidence in a defamation suit brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted with conspiracy theories about rigged machines and stolen votes in the 2020 election. Most of the evidence in the case — including text messages and emails taken from the personal phones of Fox executives, on-air personalities and producers in the weeks after the election — has remained under seal at the request of lawyers for the network.

The Fox Corp. chairman is the highest-profile individual to be questioned in the case, which hinges on Fox’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election.

Lachlan Murdoch is set to be deposed on Monday, the latest in a flurry of activity in the high-stakes case.

A U.S. judge on Monday said Devin Nunes, the former California congressman and an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, can sue NBCUniversal for defamation over a comment by Rachel Maddow concerning his relationship with a suspected Russian agent.

Dominion Voting Systems is putting Fox News star “Judge Jeanine” Pirro back on the legal hot seat in its clash with the network in a $1.6 billion defamation suit over baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections. In documents filed last Thursday in a Delaware courthouse, the voting tech company explicitly identified Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney and New York state judge, as central to its case. Its filings argue that by questioning Pirro, Dominion can meet the key legal threshold of proving Fox showed “actual malice” when it broadcast false claims the firm sought to throw the race to Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit filed last year alleged that Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil was defamed by Dobbs on Lou Dobbs Tonight and in tweets. Lawyers for Fox and Dobbs had tried to convince U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan to toss out the lawsuit before evidence such as depositions and emails could be reviewed, but the judge said Khalil had sufficiently claimed that his reputation was harmed by false accusations.

Facing a potential Department of Justice probe over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and more legal quicksand, Donald Trump has gone on the offensive against old foe CNN with a threatened defamation suit. “This letter serves as formal notice of the false statements about President Donald J. Trump in numerous articles and televised transmissions published by Cable News Network including, but not limited to, those discussed below,” reads a July 21 missive that the former POTUS’ DC attorneys at Ifrah Law, PLLC sent to CNN boss Chris Licht and EVP and General Counsel David Vigilante.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld a lower-court judge’s decision last year to toss out the lawsuit.

A federal judge has tossed out a defamation lawsuit filed by Project Veritas against CNN, concluding that an on-air statement made about the conservative group did not rise to the level of an actionable claim. Last year, Project Veritas, known for its “sting” operations against members of the mainstream media, sued the network, contending that it misrepresented the reasons that it was suspended from Twittter.

Smartmatic, an election technology company that faced baseless accusations of rigging the 2020 election, earlier filed a similar lawsuit against Fox News.

Poised to win big at this weekend’s 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, The Queen’s Gambit is now a pawn in a legal game. Barrier breaking Soviet chess icon Nona Gaprindashvili has sued Netflix for $5 million in a defamation lawsuit over a line in the Anya Taylor-Joy starrer.

A judge has ruled in favor of Fox News in rejecting a defamation suit by attorney Michael Avenatti, granting Fox’s request that the suit be dismissed. The suit was dismissed without prejudice, meaning Avenatti could refile the suit.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed defamation lawsuits against Newsmax, One America News Network and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, over their advancement of conspiracy theories that company had a role in rigging the results of the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuits against One America, Newsmax and Byrne each seek more than $1.6 billion in damages.

The famed attorney alleges that the cable news network provided misleading coverage of his arguments during the Donald Trump impeachment trial.

The conservative news network, in a statement published on its website and to be read on TV, said that while it aired accusations of voter machine manipulation against Dominion Voting Systems Security Director Eric Coomer made by Donald Trump’s lawyers and supporters, it found no evidence that they were true.

Dominion Voting Systems claims the cable news giant falsely claimed in an effort to boost faltering ratings that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election.

Smartmatic USA said today that it filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox Corp., threeof its hosts and two former lawyers for former President Donald Trump — Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — for $2.7 billion, charging that the defendants conspired to spread false claims that the company helped “steal” the U.S. presidential election.

Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged. His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.

In the last few days, two defamation cases filed against media companies by the Trump campaign have been dismissed – one on the merits and one by agreement of the parties.  This includes the suit filed by the campaign against Northland Television, the licensee of a rural Wisconsin television station.  That station was perhaps the smallest TV station to air an ad by a non-candidate group, Priorities USA, that the Trump campaign alleged was misleadingly edited to assert that the President had labeled the coronavirus a “hoax.”

Northland Television tells a judge that Donald J. Trump for President has now lost standing to pursue its libel suit against its WJFW Wausau, Wis., over a “hoax.”

The state’s Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax hasn’t proven the network acted with malice in airing interviews with two women who accuse him of sexual assault, but a Virginia federal judge found his claims in the $400 million lawsuit to be reasonable enough to deny an award of attorney’s fees.