Wilmington, Delaware
CNN
—
On Tuesday, Fox News reached a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems as the case neared opening statements, paying more than $787 million to end the conflict. colossal two-year legal battle it publicly undermined the right-wing network's credibility.
Fox News' $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company.
The deal was announced hours after jurors were sworn in at the Delaware Supreme Court. Rumors of a settlement swirled in the courthouse when proceedings came to an abrupt halt for nearly three hours after a lunch break without any explanation while the parties apparently reached an agreement.
“The parties have settled their case,” Judge Eric Davis said before dismissing the 12-person jury, crediting them with giving the parties incentive to reach a settlement, effusively praising attorneys on both sides and giving the so-called “trial of the century” the media coverage before it could even begin.
The groundbreaking agreement “embodies vindication and accountability,” Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said. “For our democracy to last another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts…Today represents a resounding endorsement of truth and democracy.”
The right-wing network said in a statement that it “recognizes[s] the Court's ruling finding certain allegations about Dominion to be false,” citing Davis' recent decision that 20 Fox News broadcasts since late 2020 have made demonstrably false claims that Dominion rigged the presidential election. But Fox won't have to admit on air that it spread lies about Dominion, a Dominion spokesperson told CNN.
The $787.5 million payout is about half of the $1.6 billion that Dominion originally looking foralthough that's nearly 10 times the company's 2018 valuation and about eight times its 2021 annual revenue, according to court documents.
Last minute agreement means closely watched case is over and will not go to trial. By agreeing with Dominion, influential Fox News executives and on-air personalities will exempted from testifying about their coverage of the 2020 election, which was filled with lies about voter fraud.
list of witnesses These included Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, his CEO son Lachlan Murdoch, and top Fox anchors such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Incriminating emails, text messages and affidavits unsealed in the case revealed that these figures and many others at Fox privately said in 2020 that the voter fraud allegations against Dominion were foolish. But the lies still spread across the airwaves.
Rupert Murdoch thought denying the election was “really crazy,” even as Fox personalities pushed the same claims onto millions of viewers. Carlson said that he “passionately” hates Donald Trumpwhose presidency was a “disaster”. Fox hosts, producers, fact checkers and executives said privately on air that claims of election fraud were “bizarre,” “dangerously reckless” and “strikingly crazy.”
These discoveries gave rise to months from blisters Fox news headlines as the case neared trial. By reaching the agreement now, Fox denied Dominion the opportunity to further expose its dishonesty through a week-long trial.
“This agreement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” Fox said in a statement Tuesday. “We hope that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, rather than bitterly divisive in court, will allow the country to move on from these problems.”
Fox News and Fox Corporation – its parent company, which was also a defendant – maintain that they never libeled Dominion and say the case was an unwarranted attack on freedom of the press under the First Amendment.
Speculation about a settlement has reached a fever pitch in recent days, especially after the court announced on Sunday one day delay for the start of the trial, which was originally scheduled to begin Monday.
jury selection process The meeting ended as planned on Tuesday morning, with both sides preparing for opening statements. They even briefly got caught up in objections to specific slides in their presentations. But when the trial did not resume immediately after lunch, the chances of a deal seemed to grow by the minute, even as top lawyers for both sides sat in the courtroom, looking at their phones and waiting.
The racially diverse jury of six men and six women was returned to court, ready to take a front-row seat to the historic trial. But Judge Davis instead told the group they helped speed up the settlement.
“Your presence here, short compared to what you thought it would be, and in some ways uneventful, was extremely important,” Davis said. “Without you, the parties would not have been able to resolve their situation.”
Many on the Dominion side considered this agreement a victory for democracy and truth itself.
“Fox admitted that he lied about Dominion, causing enormous harm to my company, our employees and the customers we serve,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said outside court Tuesday.
Although the Dominion case is now over, Fox News still faces second major libel lawsuit from Smartmaticanother voting technology company that was similarly maligned on Fox News shows after the 2020 election. This case is still being resolved and a trial is not expected anytime soon.
For its part, Dominion still has pending lawsuits against right-wing networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell. They all deny their guilt.
CNN's Liam Reilly and Danny Freeman contributed to this story.
