Dominion can call Murdoch to testify in Fox News lawsuit, judge rules
Dominion Voting Systems can call Fox Corp. executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch as witnesses to testify during a jury trial as part of its $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, a judge in Delaware said on Wednesday.
In a new letter this week, lawyers for Dominion asked Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to allow them to call the Murdochs as live witnesses during the trial, which is slated to begin later this month.
Davis indicated during a pretrial hearing on Wednesday he was open to compelling Murdoch to testify if the media mogul is issued a subpoena by Dominion’s lawyers.
Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion in connection with what it has argued in court was the network’s airing of what it knew was false information about the company’s software, echoing claims that were promoted by former President Trump’s associates and allies after the election.
Davis last week tossed out Fox’s latest attempt to throw out the suit and ruled that Dominion had proven the first key elements of their defamation claim: that the network’s statements about Dominion and the 2020 election were false.
Davis also ruled last week that a jury was needed to decide whether Fox operated with actual malice, or reckless disregard for the truth, another key legal hurdle Dominion needs to clear in order to prove defamation.
Fox, which is defending itself on First Amendment grounds, has argued against having Murdoch testify at the trial and has for weeks accused the voting systems company of “cherry picking” quotes from its leading executives and employees in a bid to embarrass the network.
“Dominion clearly wants to continue generating misleading stories from their friends in the media to distract from their weak case,” a Fox spokesperson said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Demanding witnesses who had nothing to do with the challenged broadcasts is just the latest example of their political crusade in search of a financial windfall.”
In depositions given to Dominion’s lawyers made public through recent court filings, Murdoch acknowledged that top hosts at Fox had “gone too far” in promoting Trump’s unfounded claims about the election and called statements made by Trump’s associates about Dominion during a post-election press conference: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”
Lachlan Murdoch, the top executive at Fox Corp., last month dismissed what he called “noise” being created around the company by the Dominion lawsuit, suggesting the legal challenges Fox is facing over its coverage of the 2020 election are political in nature.
“I think a lot of the noise that you hear about this case is actually not about the law, and it’s not about journalism, and it’s really about politics, right,” Murdoch said during a recent Morgan Stanley investor conference.
“And that’s unfortunately more reflective of this, this sort of polarized society that we live in today.”
The trial is slated to begin on April 17.
Updated: 4:18 p.m.
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