HomeCrimeSmartmatic returns to court in Fox News defamation case

Smartmatic returns to court in Fox News defamation case

Defendants in the Smartmatic defamation lawsuit Lou Dobbs and Sidney Powell on Fox News

After droves of their once-secret communications spilled in the public domain in the Dominion litigation — from Rupert Murdoch’s depositions to their top hosts’ private chats — Fox News returned to court on Thursday to spar with a different legal adversary.

Fox’s various corporate entities have been battling multiple billion-dollar lawsuits against voting machine companies in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. In Delaware, Dominion Voting Systems seeks damages to the tune of $1.6 billion, and in New York, Smartmatic demands $2.7 billion.

In a hearing in lower Manhattan on Thursday, Smartmatic’s attorney Nicole Wrigley complained that Fox News has been fighting them on disclosures, taking advantage of the Empire State’s expansive journalist shield laws.

“We’re having to fight, frankly, over everything,” Wrigley said.

Fox’s lawyer K. Winn Allen, from the firm Kirkland & Ellis, noted that New York law affords a “mantle of protection that’s the strongest in the nation for media organizations.”

Wrigley disputed that New York’s shield law is as expansive as Fox claims it is.

“‘Hit-and-run’ journalism is no more protected under the First Amendment than speeding on a crowded sidewalk is permitted under a valid driver’s license,” she said, citing the New York precedent Greenberg v. CBS.

By far, Dominion’s lawsuit has led to the most significant revelations about Fox’s coverage of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smartmatic says that discovery for them has been quite narrow, limited between the period when the allegedly defamatory statements occurred: October and December 2020.

Wrigley argued that what happened before and after that time frame may be relevant to their case.

For example, Smartmatic wants information about the creation of Fox’s so-called “election integrity unit” in September 2020, Wrigley said. She also requested information months after the broadcasts at issue in the case, past the firing of Lou Dobbs in early 2021.

“We are in a big, high-profile case,” she noted.

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