15
votes
Fox settles Dominion defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million, avoiding US trial
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- Title
- Dominion's defamation case against Fox poised for trial after delay
- Authors
- Helen Coster, Jack Queen
- Published
- Apr 18 2023
- Word count
- 659 words
How disappointing. I wanted to have the "news" personalities testify regarding the difference between what they said privately and on the air.
Wasn't going to happen. Dominion gave a list of 7,021 exhibits that supported that Fox knew it was lying, Fox was going to lose, and the value they'd lose on top of the original $1.6B lawsuit makes writing a $787M check a no-brainer.
And if a settlement didn't occur and Fox lost the case, they'd just let it go through appeal for another couple of decades until it got down to that $787M number anyway. So in this case they saved face by reading a 3 second statement that their brainwashed viewers won't hear or pay attention to and saved millions in legal fees.
The share prices went up on news of the settlement, they'll increase the price to advertise on the network, and they'll get to write off the settlement to lower their taxes. They won't feel a thing from this.
Good to know that “enormous and irreparable economic harm” costs $787.5 million. Would have liked to see this go to trial rather than be settled.
As far as I can tell that’s pretty much the total value of the company, so in terms of monetary value… yeah, even if it truly is irreparable, they’ve been more than made whole.
I know what you mean about a trial, keeping it in the news cycle and having all the evidence reported on would likely have been positive, but a huge settlement that still allows Dominion to publicly blame Fox and disclose the amount is pretty much a total unqualified win for them. Fox literally acknowledged they’d made false statements when they announced the settlement on one of their own shows - from Dominon’s point of view I can’t really imagine how a long expensive trial could give them any better outcome than that.
And how many of their viewers do you think care or changed the channel out of disgust for their lies?
From Dominion's POV, it's a win. They get a fat check and don't have to spend millions in legal fees or a decade+ waiting on the appeals from Fox. From the public's view, it's a loss. As nothing but positive things can come about from a long case that outlines all 7,000+ pieces of evidence that Fox lied, knew they were lying, and clips of their talking heads on the stand saying they knew they were lying.
Oh yeah, I don’t expect it to make a meaningful difference, I was just pointing out what a clear win it is from Dominion’s perspective. In a world where a lot of settlements look like “an undisclosed amount has been paid, however the defendant continues to strenuously deny any and all wrongdoing, asserts that they have never even met the plaintiff, and will sue everyone involved into the ground if this is ever spoken of again”, having the defendant broadcast an open admission that they lied is pretty big. But yeah, big in a legal and corporate sense, not in a “likely to change a single damn thing” sense.
This undoes the harm to Dominion, but the harm to society as a whole is a much larger and trickier problem.