Fox News Isn’t Out of the Woods Yet: $2.7 Billion Smartmatic Defamation Lawsuit Looms Larger Than Dominion
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You’d think Rupert Murdoch would just keep the checkbook out: No sooner than Dominion Voting Systems stepped out of the courtroom with a $787.5 million settlement prize, in stepped Smartmatic, whose separate but related $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit over 2020 election claims will soon have its own moment of reckoning.
Troublingly for Fox, its lawyers seem to be making mistakes similar to the ones that weakened its position in the Dominion case, TheWrap has learned. An attorney representing Smartmatic wrote an email to the judge this week complaining about Fox’s “attempt to withhold discovery.”
No trial date has been set in Smartmatic v. Fox News, which the London-based multinational filed in New York in 2021. But the case is actively progressing, with motions and exhibits filed as recently as this week — including a fresh round of denials from Fox, which seems, at least for now, to be standing its ground, despite its legal team’s apparent missteps.
An answer to the complaint filed Monday by Fox News goes on for dozens of pages, denying Smartmatic’s many allegations of defamation point by point. Somewhere deep in that the sea of stock legalese, Fox states it plainly at least once: “Fox News denies that it published defamation.”
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Fox News, Dominion Voting Settle Defamation Case for $787.5 Million
A day later on Tuesday, Fox abruptly settled with Dominion Voting Systems just as a jury was seated and testimony was set to begin. The network in its statement said it “acknowledged” that the court had ruled it made certain “false” claims — a concession that was surely forced upon it by the settlement terms.
Fox also issued a fresh statement Wednesday about the Smartmatic matter: “We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025. As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality and on [its] face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
Smartmatic’s case is by no means an exact copy: The voting-machine maker has a wide international footprint, but only participated directly in the 2020 election in the Los Angeles area, the sole place in the U.S. where it did business at the time. Dominion, by contrast, is the second-largest supplier of voting machine systems in the United States.
But the Smartmatic name was certainly on the lips of Trump advisers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Fox hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro — all of whom were named alongside Fox as parties in the voting-tech company’s lawsuit. Smartmatic says they “knowingly” spread false claims that its software was used to flip or delete votes.
“One of the biggest challenges in the Information Age is disinformation,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said when the suit was filed. “Fox is responsible for this disinformation campaign, which has damaged democracy worldwide and irreparably harmed Smartmatic and other stakeholders who contribute to modern elections.”
It might stand to reason that since Dominion got roughly half of its $1.6 billion ask, Smartmatic, with its $2.7 billion stated demand for relief, would be eyeballing a settlement well over a billion dollars. But Fox is clearly not buying that, with its statements focusing on the amount. Assessing damages is a jury’s job, and juries can rule in a plaintiff’s favor only to turn around and get fickle about the award amount — a gamble Smartmatic may not want to take if, say, a Dominion-sized settlement ever becomes an option.
Stumbles on the way to the courthouse
There’s at least one significant overlap between these cases: Fox attorneys with egg on their faces.
Of the many embarrassing revelations and stumbles Fox News suffered on the road to settling with Dominion, the most recent was network attorneys being openly scolded by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis for failing to disclose simple things during the discovery process — like Rupert Murdoch’s actual corporate role at Fox News.
It looks like network attorneys are at it again: An attorney representing Smartmatic wrote an email to the judge this week complaining about Fox’s “attempt to withhold discovery.”
The email obtained by TheWrap accuses Fox of using a procedural excuse for not providing information requested by Smartmatic: “Fox Corporation’s attempt to withhold discovery that it should have produced months ago … is gamesmanship and flies in the face of [the judge’s] clear instructions.”
Sound familiar?
