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lawsuit A last-second settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems’ historic defamation lawsuit against Fox News, the parties announced Tuesday in court.
The settlement was apparently brokered while the trial was on the brink of opening statements in Wilmington, Delaware.
After swearing in the jury earlier Tuesday, an unexplained hours-long delay paused proceedings in court, which yet again triggered rampant speculation that a deal was quietly in the works.
What this means: The last-minute deal means the closely watched case is effectively over and won’t proceed to trial. By settling with Dominion, influential Fox News executives and prominent on-air personalities will be spared from testifying about their 2020 election coverage, which was filled with lies about voter fraud.
Details of the settlement were not immediately available and might never become public.
More on the case: In its lawsuit, Dominion sought $1.6 billion in damages from Fox News. The right-wing network argued vociferously in pretrial proceedings that this number was inflated and didn’t come close to accurately capturing the potential losses that Dominion could have suffered as a result of Fox’s 2020 broadcasts.
Fox News and Fox Corporation — its parent company, which was also a defendant — say they never defamed Dominion, and say the case is a meritless assault on press freedoms. They denied Dominion’s claim that they promoted these election conspiracies to save their falling ratings after the 2020 election.
While the Dominion case is now over, Fox News is still facing a second major defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting technology company that was smeared on Fox shows after the 2020 election. That case is still in the discovery process, and a trial isn’t expected anytime soon.
In one of the most closely watched legal battles in recent media history, Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a surprise settlement on April 18, 2023, just hours before opening arguments were scheduled to begin in a Delaware courtroom. The defamation lawsuit, filed by Dominion, accused Fox News of knowingly spreading false claims about its voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The case was poised to become a landmark moment in the battle over media accountability and misinformation. Instead, it ended with a historic settlement: Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million, one of the largest publicly known settlements in a defamation case in U.S. history.
Background: The Lawsuit
Dominion Voting Systems, a private company that provides voting machine technology across the U.S., filed the $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News in 2021. The company claimed that Fox News promoted conspiracy theories alleging Dominion machines had flipped votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden during the 2020 election — claims that were not only false but also widely debunked by independent experts and government agencies.
Despite this, several Fox hosts and guests, including prominent Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, continued to air the allegations. Dominion claimed that Fox aired these segments to win back viewers who were turning to more right-leaning outlets in the wake of the election.
In pre-trial filings, Dominion presented a trove of internal Fox communications showing that many Fox executives, hosts, and producers privately acknowledged that the claims were false — even as they continued to give them airtime.
Why the Settlement Matters
The sudden settlement avoided what could have been a deeply damaging trial for Fox News. Had the case gone to court, some of the network’s top talent — including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Maria Bartiromo — as well as Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, were expected to testify under oath.
Instead, Fox chose to settle, issuing a statement that read:
“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards
