CNN — The voting technology company Smartmatic can move forward with its defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation, a New York judge ruled Wednesday, dealing a blow to the parent company of Fox News, which is already fighting the massive lawsuit over its repeated airing of 2020 election lies.
The decision from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge David Cohen represents a significant setback to Fox’s corporate leadership, including the powerful Murdoch family, who will now face more scrutiny in the litigation. Cohen already let the case proceed against Fox News — and on Wednesday, he rejected a request by Fox Corporation to throw out the claims against the parent company.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The decision from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge David Cohen represents a significant setback to Fox’s corporate leadership, including the powerful Murdoch family, who will now face more scrutiny in the litigation.
“As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
The case is still in the discovery phase, with some major depositions taking place in the past month, including former Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch.
That case unearthed tranches of internal emails that described in devastating detail how top Fox officials cravenly allowed Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to lie about the election on its shows.
Fox filed its counterclaims against Smartmatic last year, in a bid to push back against the company and recover the money it’s spending on high-priced attorneys to defend itself.
Smartmatic had asked Cohen to dismiss the counterclaims, on the basis that of Fox’s arguments were already shut down in Dominion’s similar defamation case that the right-wing network settled last year, and that they shouldn’t be relitigated now.
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