Fox News Loses Effort to Dodge Smartmatic Suit Over Election – By Erik Larson (Bloomberg) / March 9, 2022
(Bloomberg) — A New York judge ruled that a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit can proceed against Fox News over false claims the network aired about Smartmatic Corp.’s role in the 2020 election.
The ruling Tuesday by Justice David Cohen in Manhattan wasn’t a total win for Smartmatic. The state court judge threw out Smartmatic’s individual claims against former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Fox on-air personality Jeanine Pirro, as well as some claims against Rudy Giuliani, a longtime attorney for former President Donald Trump.
Smartmatic “adequately pleaded” its claims that “Fox News acted with actual malice by broadcasting information proffered by Powell, Giuliani, and the Fox anchor defendants which it knew was false and that, even if Fox News did not know the information was false, it had reason to doubt,” the judge said.
Cohen’s decision is the latest twist in a legal saga that began after Trump supporters accused Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems Inc. of being at the center of a vast international conspiracy to rig the election against the former president. That false claim was echoed by conservative news outlets and ultimately helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection.
