Dem
47
GOP
53
Just after the 2020 election, Fox News hosts claimed that voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems were rigged. Dominion sued and eventually Fox settled the suit for $788 million. Problem solved? Not exactly, because Fox also defamed another voting machine company, Smartmatic, in the same way and they are asking for $2.7 billion in their lawsuit. Last week, a New York State appellate court ruled that Smartmatic's lawsuit can go forward.
No date has been set for the trial, but Fox is clearly in a terrible position now. By settling with Dominion, they de facto admitted that they had intentionally harmed Dominion, knew it, and didn't care. They said essentially the same thing about Smartmatic. That fact is not actually admissible in court in New York, but the story was in all the papers. It would be a big gamble on Fox's part to hope that they get a jury with zero members who are aware of the outcome. And that's on top of the fact that Fox is pretty clearly guilty.
As a consequence, now that the suit can go to trial, Fox is probably going to cough up north of a billion dollars to make this problem go away. What it doesn't want is a jury formally saying that Fox lies on the air over and over, saying things that the hosts and producers very well know are false. We suspect negotiations over an amount are probably going to start in earnest soon, as both sides begin preparing for a trial. (V)