18 April 2023 , 18:03
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Rupert Murdoch’s business empire has settled the “defamation trial of the century” as jurors were sat ready to hear the $1.6 billion case.
Murdoch was tonight hit with a £634 million bill after his US Fox News channel settled just moments before the trial was due to begin.
Insiders tonight claimed the secret deal is said to have cost the media tycoon hundreds of millions of dollars but stopped his star presenters from being forced to take the stand.
As part of the settlement, it included a $787.5 million (£633.6 million) payment from Fox, according to Dominion's lawyers.
"The truth matters," said their lawyer Justin Nelson."Lies have consequences."
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It was all set to get underway with the tycoon’s legal team calling Homer Simpson as a witness and laywers waiting to begin their opening addresses to the court.
Dominion Voting Systems had sued the Australian’s Fox News claiming it had damaged its reputation by repeatedly airing conspiracy theories in the US about its machine.
They claimed many of the channel’s star presenters falsely accused the company of helping orchestrate a fraud that cost former President Donald Trump re-election in 2020.
Tucker Carlson, host of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," poses for photos in a Fox News Channel studio on March 2, 2017, in New York (AP)Expected witnesses were set to include Mr Murdoch, his son Lachlan and a raft of Fox News talent past and present.
The agreement came just hours after Judge Davis authorised a special master to investigate Mr Murdoch's Fox News relating to its handling of discovery, an issue he had raised at an earlier hearing.
As jurors sat in their seats to hear opening arguments, the justice failed to appear for almost three hours as discussions took place outside the court.
When he returned shortly after 4pm local time he told the panel of 12 men and women: “The parties have resolved the case.”
The case had been scheduled to last for weeks while set to place some of the tycoon’s biggest US stars on the stand.
In a statement after the deal, Fox Corporation said In a statement: “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems.
"We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.
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"This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
Lawyers for Fox had unveiled some of their defence exhibits. They included four separate clips from the hit TV series, The Simpsons.
The four episodes all show Homer Simpson voting in Presidential elections.
(UGC)The episodes were "Treehouse of Horror XIX" where Homer Votes for Obama, "Homer Votes 2012" where Homer votes for Mitt Romney, "Homer Votes 2016" where Putin tries to convince Homer to vote for Donald Trump and "Treehouse of Horror XXXI" where homer is indecisive when going to vote for Biden or Trump.
Although unclear why the clips had been included, The Simpsons has been a staple of Fox's prime-time lineup for over three decades.
Opening speeches began Tuesday, April 18, in the civil trial before 12 jurors in Wilmington, Delaware. In America, defamation cases are notoriously hard to win.
But the judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit against Fox has tonight dismissed the jury just as the trial was to begin.
The announcement averts a prolonged trial in a case that exposed how the top-rated network chased viewers by spreading false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
A truck with a digital sign saying, 'Rupert Murdoch KNEW' drives past the Leonard Williams Justice Center (Getty Images)The sudden announcement came after jurors had been seated and lawyers were preparing to make opening statements for a trial that had been expected to last six weeks.
Terms were not disclosed for the proposed settlement, which still needs approval from the judge overseeing the case.
An entity can’t merely have just lied, it must have known - or at least strongly suspected - it was lying at the time, and it has to have been done with “actual malice.” The court had already ruled on the first two, saying Fox aired lies and knew they were lies.
Instead of a trial on the comments' veracity, the jury was to be asked to consider whether Mr Murdoch’s news channel made the claims maliciously.
The judge has already rejected several of Fox’s First Amendment free speech defences and, in pretrial rulings, barred the network from arguing its guests’ allegedly defamatory statements were “newsworthy” and deserving of coverage.
Picture taken on February 22, 2015 shows Rupert Murdoch arriving at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, California. (AFP via Getty Images)Even before the trial, the case has caused huge embarrassment for the channel’s stars.
One of their biggest, Tucker Carlson, who has repeated many of the conspiracy theories in support of Trump, was found to have a real hatred for the former President.
On air, he supported the businessman, but in private he texted his loathing of the Republican. In court-supplied text messages sent on January 4, 2021, Carlson said he was done with Trump and his unfounded claims of a rigged election.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he texted an unidentified person.
“I hate him passionately. ... I can’t handle much more of this,” he added.