Wilmington, Delaware
CNN
—
Fox News reached a last-minute settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday as the case headed toward opening statements, paying more than $787 million to end a colossal two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the right-wing network’s credibility.
The $787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company.
The deal was announced hours after the jury was sworn in in Delaware Superior Court. Rumors of a deal swirled in court when, after a lunch break, proceedings were dramatically halted for nearly three hours without explanation as the parties apparently reached an agreement.
“The parties have resolved their case,” Judge Eric Davis said before dismissing the 12-member jury, crediting them with giving the parties the impetus to reach a settlement, effusively praising lawyers for both sides and ending the media’s so-called “trial of the century” before it could even begin.
The unprecedented agreement “represents a vindication and a responsibility,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for Dominion. “For our democracy to endure for another 250 years, and perhaps 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 decisions have found that certain allegations about Dominion were false,” referring to Davis’ recent ruling that 20 Fox News broadcasts from late 2020 contained patently 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 representative told CNN.
The $787.5 million payment is about half of the $1.6 billion Dominion initially sought, though it represents nearly 10 times the company’s 2018 valuation and about eight times its 2021 annual revenue, according to court documents.
The last-minute deal means the closely watched case is over and will not go to trial. By reaching a settlement with Dominion, influential Fox News executives and prominent on-air personalities will be spared from having to testify about their 2020 election coverage, which was filled with lies about voter fraud.
The witness list included Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, his CEO son Lachlan Murdoch, and top Fox hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Damning emails, text messages, and testimony made public during the case revealed that these figures, and many others at Fox, privately said in 2020 that the election fraud claims against Dominion were stupid. But the lies were still spread on air.
Rupert Murdoch called election denial “really crazy,” even as Fox personalities peddled the same claims to millions of viewers. Carlson said he “passionately” loathed Donald Trump, whose presidency has been a “disaster.” Fox hosts, producers, fact-checkers and senior executives have said privately on the shows that the claims of a stolen election are “outlandish,” “dangerously reckless” and “unbelievably crazy.”
Those revelations generated months of scathing headlines for Fox as the case moved toward trial. By reaching a settlement now, Fox has deprived Dominion of a chance to further expose its dishonesty with a weeks-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 through the acrimony of a contentious lawsuit, will allow the country to move forward on these issues.”
Fox News and Fox Corporation – its parent company, which was also a defendant – maintain that they never defamed Dominion and say the case was a baseless attack on the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Speculation about a deal has reached fever pitch in recent days, especially after the court announced on Sunday a one-day postponement of the start of the trial, which was originally scheduled to begin on Monday.
The jury selection process ended as scheduled Tuesday morning, and both sides prepared for opening statements. They even briefly hesitated to raise objections to specific slides in their presentations. But when the proceedings did not resume promptly after lunch, the chances of a settlement seemed to increase by the minute, even as top lawyers on both sides sat in the courtroom, staring at their phones and waiting.
The jury, made up of six men and six women, was returned to court, ready to witness a historic trial. But Davis, the judge, instead told the panel that they had helped secure a settlement.
“Your presence here, brief compared to what you thought, and uneventful in a certain sense, has been extremely important,” Davis said. “Without you, the parties would not have been able to resolve their situation.”
Many on the Dominion side viewed this settlement as a victory for democracy and for truth itself.
“Fox admitted to lying about Dominion, which caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and the customers we serve,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said in court Tuesday.
While the Dominion case is now over, Fox News is still facing a second major defamation lawsuit brought by Smartmatic, another election technology company that was similarly defamed on Fox News broadcasts after the 2020 election. That case is still in discovery, and a trial is not expected anytime soon.
For its part, Dominion still has ongoing lawsuits against right-wing television networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell. They all deny wrongdoing.
CNN’s Liam Reilly and Danny Freeman contributed to this report.
