Smartmatic, the voting software company that Donald Trump’s lawyers falsely accused of manipulating vote counts in the 2020 presidential election, has filed a $2.7-billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and three of its on-air hosts — Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro — who presented the disinformation on their programs. The suit filed Thursday in New York State Supreme Court also names Trump’s lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani, who were frequent guests on Fox News programs in the weeks after the November election.
....“The company’s reputation for providing transparent, auditable, and secure election technology and software was irreparably harmed,” the suit said. “Overnight, Smartmatic went from an under-the-radar election technology and software company with a track record of success to the villain in [the] Defendants’ disinformation campaign.”
I have no idea if Smartmatic has any chance of winning this suit, or even if it has much of a case, legally speaking. And God knows, Fox has settled plenty of suits in the past for large sums, none of which seem to have slowed them down.
Still, it's worth putting them on notice that there's a price to be paid for going off the deep end on dangerous and absurd conspiracy theorizing. Maybe losing (or, more likely, settling) a few more suits like this will finally teach them a lesson or two.
You really, really need to read the first page of the introduction...
https://www.smartmatic.com/uploads/Smartmatic_Complaint_Against_Fox_Corporation.pdf
Thanks for the Link...However, I would add that just the Table of Contents, Pages 5 through 9, is fascinating reading! Best Wishes, Traveller
Whoooo! Owwwwch! Wow.
Thanks very much.
Ouch.
It's like they're writing a third-grade reading primer. Simple, declarative sentences.
They must really know their audience!
I think it will take a huge settlement or a very public confession by defendants to get Smartmatic to buy in. The image of an election tech company needs to be perfect if it and its key players are to have any future in the business.
Well as you've said Kevin, the way to hurt them is hit them in the pocketbook.
And if the suits ultimately are settled for far less, or even dismissed, it turns advertisers off, and that's worse for Fox than even a large judgement would be.
Also, there is considerable schadenfreude in watching corporations attack each other tooth, nail, and lawsuit.
It takes a village......
Of lawyers to get the republicans attention
^^^
Even Fox has their limits. They bounced Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly when they got too troublesome and cost them too much in lawsuits.
You know, I have a thought...Shepard Smith must be thrilled to have gotten away from Fox News as he did...seeing former colleagues being named as defendants must...cause him a sigh and raised eyebrows.
I might also add that Mr. Smith on CNBC, a new news show, is...pretty good, I am enjoying it as straight news more so than CNN at 4PM.
Best Wishes, Traveller (enjoying the orange)
Fox has won at least one case arguing that everyone knows they are liars and that they have no obligation to tell the truth. I wouldn't be surprised if they take the same tactic here. And honestly, you would have to look very hard to find anybody on the TV less credible than those three. But of course, the cult wanted smoke blown up their asses, and faux was happy to cash those checks. I think that does make them liable, but I'm not the federalist society approved, Dump nominated, McConnell approved goon that will sit in judgement of their case.
Here is how Cucker beat the rap: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye
Then FOXnews should be alright with being programmed on cable providers with the entertainment tier (TBS, AMC, Lifetime).
I think Fox has two problems rooted in defamation law. The first is that opinion has definite limits. To greatly oversimplify, an opinion doesn’t have to be objectively reasonable but neither can the speaker be deliberately obtuse and he certainly can’t disguise unknowing falsehood as “opinion”.
A related problem is whether it is okay to provide a platform (publish) for speech which you know is false or would know with due diligence (duty to inquire). This is a particular problem for Fox News because after they received various demands for retraction they tried to have it both ways by continuing to publish the opinion speakers (Hannity, Judge Jeannine, Rudy) false and defamatory statements even as the “news division” was publishing stories making it clear that there was no basis for the opinion.
Probably doesn’t count as a retraction under NY law but might put them behind the eight ball in terms of allowing knowing falsehoods to be broadcast under the guise of “opinion”.
If 'deliberate obtuseness' is the criteria that would cover virtually the entirety of conservatism.
I was alluding to a technical term of art in defamation law and criminal law (which I’ve forgotten) but which essentially says that going out of your way to not know something means that a jury can find that you knew it all the time. The same is true of an "opinion" which is expressed even though the speaker know it's false or suspects it is false but also too good to investigate.
The leading case on this “opinion” defense, and the one Fox News will probably be relying on heavily, is Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., (1974) 418 U.S. 323 which essentially protects all expressions of “opinion” on the theory that there’s “no such thing as a wrong idea”.
But later, many courts used Section 566 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts to essentially limit the “opinion” defense to expressions of opinion based on disclosed, non-defamatory facts no matter how unreasonable or derogatory the opinion. But the Restatement also said that “…if the expression of opinion is based on undisclosed or implied facts, support of an action depends on the understanding of the recipient of the statement, since the meaning of a communication is that which the recipient reasonably understands it to be, even if he/she is mistaken in that understanding. So if the recipient reasonably believes the truth of an undisclosed or implied defamatory fact about the subject of a statement, the speaker is liable.”
I think that’s why the battleground will be whether the speakers knew or should have known that their statements were without support and/or whether the statements of “opinion” were based on “undisclosed or implied” facts (which I think is indeed the case).
If Fox News uses the opinion defense, they’re in for some very intrusive discovery, which I’m pretty sure they’re not going to enjoy.
It’s a New York State court complaint. It was not filed in federal court. So federal judges won’t be involved.
Hey, fellow liberals, remember the secret handshake,
every time you buy KFC it's a sacrifice to Moloch!
[because you exchange money for it, as Karl Marx teaches us]
Well, I think that Fox tends to regard these things as a cost of doing business. Now maybe a judgment of a couple of billion dollars would be an existential threat--but we all know that the amounts asked in legal filings are just an opening position and that ultimately the settlement or verdict will be less, typically a lot less.
And I don't know that a voting software company would be able to prove billions of dollars in damages from this.
I hope I'm wrong, but I think that for Fox this is just another small bump in the road. The Murdochs probably even consider it a price worth paying.
it can feed the martyr complex
Today Smartmatic became Stella Liebeck at the FOX studios.
Hard to know. But the companies were both profitable, expanding worldwide, and utterly dependent upon having an impeccable reputation which these defendants have obviously ruined. If they call experts to project their future earnings and how badly those earnings would be crippled, yeah, could easily be in the billions.
The combination of separate damage to Dominion and Smartmatic has the potential to add up to some truly serious Murdoch-emasculating money.
The added dynamic is the internal family one, which contrasts James and Liz versus Murdoch Père and Lachlan the latter two being more reptilian and in some way actual True Believers verging into Q territory.
Ken White, First Amendment attorney on All The Presidents' Lawyers podcast, says almost all defamation suits are performative, but this one and Dominion's actually have some merit. I hope so. I'd dearly love to see defendant Giuliani.
I’ve followed this affair pretty closely and I’ve read both complaints. I think they have both legal merit and substantial jury appeal. Especially if rooting around in Fox and fiends files produces evidence that the “opinion” defendants are more calculating than crazy. That adds up to big money and no face saving way to back down.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's daughter,
https://twitter.com/blaireerskine/status/1357493743688028163?s=20
Can't say whether or not that's her daughter, but MTG is definitely batshit crazy.
It's the comedian Blaire Erskine's take on Greene's daughter. Still hilarious though.
She's a comedian.
A lady Brent Terhune.
Can't say whether or not that's her daughter, but MTG is definitely batshit crazy.
It has worked against Newsmax. A Late Show had a great segment on their backpedaling
https://youtu.be/J2UJgbISdWA&t=546s
Consider the incentives for the three groups of defendants: Fox; the three Fox anchors; and Giulani and Powell, who are not Fox employees. Only Fox has the money to settle - a big award means bankruptcy for individuals. Groups B and C have an incentive to blame Fox management, and vice versa. The Rat Prisoners' Dilemma could lead to a bloodbath. I don't see Lachlan Murdoch doing well in the upcoming funeral games.