Fox News suffers a major setback in the Dominion case

A judge said the suit would go to trial, for a jury to assess whether the network knowingly spread false allegations about Dominion Voting Systems, and to determine potential damages.

Fox News suffered a significant setback Friday in its defense against a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit that claims it lied about of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">A Delaware Superior Court judge has ruled the case, brought by Dominion Voting Systems, is strong enough to conclude that Fox hosts and guests repeatedly made false claims about the Dominion machines and their supposed role in a fictitious plot to steal the election from President Donald J. Trump.

"The evidence developed in this civil proceeding," wrote Judge Eric M. Davis, CRYSTAL makes it clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion regarding the 2020 election are true. spreading false allegations about Dominion knowing that they were false, and to determine the possible damages. The trial is scheduled to begin April 17.

But he rejected much of Fox's core defense: that the First Amendment protected statements made on its airwaves alleging that the election had somehow been stolen. Fox argued that he was only reporting on election fraud allegations as inherently newsworthy and that any statements made by his hosts about alleged fraud were covered by the Constitution as an opinion. .

“It seems oxymoronic to call statements "opinions" while claiming that the statements are newsworthy allegations and/or substantially accurate reports of official proceedings,” Judge Davis said.

For example, on a “Lou Dobbs Tonight” broadcast on Nov. 24, 2020, Mr. Dobbs said, “I think that many Americans did not think of the voter 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 many Americans. »

The judge declared this statement a fact, rather than an opinion, about Dominion.

Under libel law, Dominion must prove that Fox knowingly disseminated false information or did so with a reckless disregard for the truth, meaning it had reason to believe that the information it ' he was broadcasting were false.

Numerous legal experts said Dominion had presented ample evidence that Fox hosts and producers were aware of what they were doing.

RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, said the judge signaled that he disagreed with many of Fox's arguments.

"The case will be presented to the jury with several of the key elements already decided in favor of Dominion," Ms. Anderson Jones said.

Dominion, in a statement, said: "We are satisfied with the court's thorough ruling which firmly rejected all of Fox's arguments and defenses and finding at law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial. news."

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">"Fox will continue to fiercely defend the rights to free speech and a free press as we enter the next phase of these proceedings," she added.

The two parties had asked the judge to render an interim judgment, that is to say to rule in their favor on the merits of the evidence that each of the parties had produced so far, including at a preliminary hearing last week. Dominion argued that the text messages and emails between Fox executives and the hosts proved...