Now that a judge has decided a jury will be empaneled to hear the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News, the conservative network is about to face a monumental task of defending itself from a $1.6 billion lawsuit without several crucial defense arguments.
That was the topic of discussion Sunday on MSNBC when host Katie Phang spoke with Jeremy Peters of The New York Times.
“Judge Eric Davis on Friday decimated much of Fox’s potential trial defenses, ruling that Fox cannot invoke the neutral report privilege because the evidence does not support that Fox conducted good faith reporting, Phang noted. “The judge is also blocking Fox from using the fair reporting privilege because the statements made by Fox and its guests were not related to official proceedings.”
Peters concurred with Phang, adding, “When the jury gets the case several of Fox’s key arguments will not be available for its lawyers to make.”
The Times reporter then elaborated:
“Several of these will have already been decided in Dominion’s favor because of the judge’s decision on Friday. So what this does is it significantly limits Fox’s ability to mount a defense and leaves for the jury the key question of whether or not there is enough evidence to show that Fox hosts, producers and executives knew what they were putting on the air was false or at least recklessly disregarded information showing that it was false.”
“That is how you get to potentially significant and sizeable judgment against Fox News,” Peters added. “Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion and appears that, unless this settles, which I think it’s highly unlikely at this point, and has already been highly unlikely because Fox appears to be preserving its options for appeal here, this is going to head to the jury and it will be one of the most significant and far-reaching defamation suits against a major media company that we have seen in decades.”
Fox is also facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election and software technology company.
The first line of that lawsuit lays out exactly how both Smartmatic and Dominion plan to win their cases against Fox:
“The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”
None of those facts are up for debate. And they could wind up bankrupting Fox.
