Voting-tech firm sues Fox News

Dominion’s $1.6B defamation case follows Smartmatic suit

Dominion Voting Systems on Friday filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, alleging that the network purposefully aired false claims about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election in order to boost ratings.

It’s the latest in a series of legal actions that experts say could force broadcasters to exert more caution.

In the suit, Dominion argues that Fox and several of its on-air personalities elevated conspiracy theories about the voting company rigging the 2020 election and allowed falsehoods by their guests to go unchecked, including a wild claim that the company’s machines were manufactured in “Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chavez” and that Dominion’s algorithm manipulated votes so Trump would lose.

“Fox engaged in this knowing and reckless propagation of these enormous falsehoods in order to profit off these lies,” the lawsuit says. “Fox wanted to continue to protect its broadcast ratings, catering to an audience deeply loyal to President Trump,” it says.

Dominion filed the lawsuit in Delaware, where both Dominion and Fox are incorporated.

Smartmatic, another voting-technology company, filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit in February against Fox News and several of its most prominent commentators over what Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica called a “disinformation campaign” about the presidential election.

Fox, which has filed four motions to dismiss the Smartmatic lawsuit, said in response to the Dominion lawsuit that it “is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism,” and that it would “vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”

Dominion attorney Stephen Shackleford said Fox “took a small flame and turned it into a raging fire” by amplifying false statements about the election and Dominion, and that the media company did so with “reckless disregard” for the truth — alluding to the high legal standard that the courts have maintained for prominent figures suing for defamation.

“If this case doesn’t rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does,” Shackleford said.

Dominion, which has requested a jury trial, said it may file further suits against the Fox personalities who pushed the disputed election framing, such as Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, but chose to first focus on Fox.

The lawsuit cites Fox’s own reporting in advance of Election Day that the mail-in vote would heavily favor Joe Biden, and that it was likely that the result wouldn’t be known for days.

But Dominion lawyers argue that Fox News ratings went into “in a freefall” in the days after the election and that the network was losing Trump loyalists to more right-wing channels such as Newsmax.

Dominion alleges in its suit that Fox repeated false claims about Dominion’s role in the election as a defensive strategy — specifically as a way to keep it from losing viewers to rival networks on the right. It noted that Trump and his supporters were upset with Fox for calling Arizona for Biden on the night of the election.

Around the same time, Trump-affiliated attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani appeared on several conservative and right-wing media outlets, where they repeated Trump’s claim that the election had been stolen. Hosts such as Bartiromo and Dobbs also “endorsed and repeated” their lies, Dominion alleges.

Dominion repeatedly notified the network that it had aired falsehoods, including sending several “setting the record straight” emails to Fox News reporters and producers, but was ignored, the complaint alleges.

As a result of Fox’s conduct, Dominion employees ranging from software engineers to its chief executive have been threatened, and the company suffered reputational damage that has diminished its value, Dominion’s lawyers said Friday. The company also stands to lose $600 million over eight years in profits, as officials in states and localities have reevaluated their contracts with the company, the lawyers added.