Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, just heading off a trial shortly after the jury was seated.
The deal ends a monthslong legal battle over whether the media company had defamed the voting machine maker when they broadcast election conspiracy theories in 2020.
Lawyers and media sat waiting in the courtroom for more than two hours after opening statements were scheduled to begin on Tuesday afternoon.
Dominion sued Fox News in 2021, demanding $1.6 billion in damages. They said the network defamed it when it broadcast baseless claims that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, that it paid kickbacks to politicians and that its machines “rigged” the 2020 presidential election by flipping millions of votes for Trump to Biden.
The settlement comes after a bruising week for Fox News. During pretrial conference hearings, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis sanctioned them for withholding evidence, admonished them for not being straightforward with him. He said he would allow Dominion to conduct an additional deposition with Rupert Murdoch at Fox’s expense.
On Tuesday, Davis also appointed a special master to investigate whether Fox had adequately complied with court-ordered discovery.
Legal filings made thousands of pages of emails, text messages, and other communications public, revealing that Fox News journalists, hosts, and executives knew the bogus claims about the election were false, even as the network continued to put them on air.
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