Judge Steers Away from Dominion’s ‘Intrusive’ Requests for Fox News Hosts’ Performance Reviews in $1.6B Defamation Lawsuit – By Aaron Keller (Law and Crime) / Oct 12 2021
The Delaware judge overseeing a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News has steered away from an attempt by Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. to obtain the internal personnel records of high-profile hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, and former host Lou Dobbs. That’s according to a report by Bloomberg.
The judge overseeing the case said Dominion’s request for internal performance reviews was both “too intrusive” and “about as personal as it gets.” Judge Eric Davis made the comments during a discovery hearing, Bloomberg wrote, but did not go into detail about the broader ramifications of the request.
Per the Bloomberg retelling of the hearing, Dominion said it wanted the documents to “bolster its claim that Fox maliciously booked former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell to appear on its top-rated shows, where they spread false claims that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election.”
“These documents are relevant to Fox’s oversight of its on-air personalities and Fox’s knowledge of whether they were prone to lie and mis-inform the public on their shows,” Dominion said in a written document explained by Bloomberg in a separate pre-hearing report.
