Yesterday the judge in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, Eric Davis, learned something new:
Fox Corp. had asserted since Dominion filed its lawsuit in 2021 that Rupert Murdoch had no official role at Fox News....But on Easter Sunday, Fox disclosed to Dominion’s attorneys that Murdoch also is “executive chair” at Fox News.
Davis was clearly disturbed by the disclosure, coming on the eve of the trial. “My problem is that it has been represented to me more than once that he is not an officer,” the judge said....In response, Carter said he believed Murdoch’s title at Fox News was only “honorific.”
There is no such thing as "honorific." Legally, Murdoch is either an officer of Fox News or he isn't. He is.
Today, it got worse:
The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said on Wednesday that he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had withheld evidence, scolding the lawyers for not being “straightforward” with him.
The rebuke came after lawyers for Dominion, which is suing for defamation, revealed a number of instances in which Fox’s lawyers had not turned over evidence in a timely manner.
....He also said he would very likely appoint a special master to investigate Fox’s handling of discovery of documents and the question of whether Fox had inappropriately withheld details about Rupert Murdoch’s role as a corporate officer of Fox News.
I am thrilled that this lawsuit is turning into such a shitshow for Fox. It's exactly what they deserve.
*I am paraphrasing.
Yawn. Get back to us when the judge tosses their lawyers and/or Rupert Murdoch in jail for obstruction of justice and/or making false statements to the court. It's what judges do all the time to lower-level defendants who lie and purposefully delay court proceedings.
You may profitably reflect on the meaning of two words: Civil. Criminal.
The consider the difference between a civil proceeding of a private party against another private party and a criminal proceeding. And then consider how useless your comment was.
Whether a civil or criminal trial, lying to a judge is a crime.
Now consider how useless your comment was.
I really won't insofar as
(1) the commentator clearly is confounding criminal and civil and government action with disputes between private parties
(2) it is not in any way clear from the record there is perjury under law
(3) in civil cases between private parties it is in common law vanishingly rare to see any criminal perjury to arise except in egregious cases
So the evocation of obstruction of justice is misplaced, as is the evocation of facts that arise essentialy from criminal law
“in civil cases between private parties it is in common law vanishingly rare to see any criminal perjury to arise except in egregious cases”
Tell that to Bill Clinton (and the Supreme Court that ruled a civil case against a sitting president wouldn’t be distracting).
Some folks just can't stop trying to defend Fox News no matter how many lies they tell.
Yawn. Get back to us when the judge tosses their lawyers and/or Rupert Murdoch in jail for obstruction of justice and/or making false statements to the court
Yep. As usual in dealing with stories emanating out of the US these days, cynicism is the new realism. The reality is very large numbers of Americans hold utterly insane political views, but nonetheless need to buy denture cream and laxatives. Fox News is a very powerful advertising vehicle for reaching these masses. The network is going nowhere, even after Rupert's demise, and the possible fine they're facing doesn't mean shit. Murdoch's paid more than than in alimony.
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The incompetent arrogance is what kills me. These lawyers seem to seriously underestimate what discovery software can do these days. But even without that, gambling that Dominion's team wouldn't spot omissions like that was a terrible bet to make.
I expect their hosts have mostly forgotten how reality works, being largely immune to it. But even their lawyers seem delusional.
There aren't a lot of firms that do billion-dollar-bet-the-firm sorts of litigation, and Fox has switched counsel in the past year. So that could be part of it.
A bigger part, I imagine, is that Fox is probably a really, really shitty client. It's a quasi-family business with nonagenarian billionaire patriarch, which is a recipe for bad oversight. Further, given how big a role the talking heads on Fox play in company policy, I'd bet that a lot of how Fox runs is based on the whims of preening fabulists like Hannity and Carlson. Add into the mix that the basic Fox business model is to sell emotional fantasy as "news," and the idea that Fox might not only conceal material facts but not even be institutionally capable of realizing that's what it was doing is rather plausible.
Put another way: a well-run company with good legal counsel would have complied with discovery requirements and crafted a legal strategy accordingly.* But a well-run company with good legal counsel would have never found itself in this mess, because a reality-based enterprise would have been aware from the get-go that you cannot mount a billion-dollar campaign of lies against a public company and not expect billions of dollars in legal risks.
_________
* However: Fox may have an eye not on what the law *is*, but what, with a 6-3 majority on SCOTUS, the law *could be*. After all, while most conservative legal blather about libel/slander standards has been agitating to make it _easier_ to sue media companies, the conservatives on the Court don't really have any compunctions with hypocrisy, and I'd argue that at least one of them fully believes that Dominion really did steal the election for Biden.
I think indeed you have put your finger on it: Fox News in particular being under the hand of Murdoch père et Murdoch fils the elder, isn't run as an ordinary media company. Without doubt with Lachlan the legal team did not have brilliant options.
Also, it seems very clear that the Fox business model depends on spreading lies to make money, and that they are terrified of losing market share if they aren’t lying enough.
That would seem to put them at risk of loss in a defamation case.
Incompetent and arrogant, sure, but let's give the lawyers credit for working on a Sunday. And a holiday, no less! And making the judge read their bullshit over the weekend.
Corporate law, this is standard.
While every trouble that Fox News gets is a good thing, this has the negative effect of distracting from the main message of the case, that Fox systematically lied about the 2020 elections to support Trump efforts to overturn the results.
It does no such thing, rather they have rather nastily damaged themselves with the judge and succeeded in getting adverse decisions relative to how they can potentially frame to jury.
the "message" of the case is what gets put in front of the jury and what's allowed to be framed.
What one reads in news is virtually besides the point.
Well, "shitshow" isn't paraphrasing anyway.
In the stories, when the fox gets caught, he slinks off with his tail between his legs, and there's a bit of peace for a while..
I wish it so.
But I am enjoying the show too much, so I'm guessing slinking off to the shadows is not going to be the end result, and the fox may escape the trap.
But make no mistake, this fox carries rabies.
Is Fox not (part of) a publicly traded company? Because if it were I would think the likes of who is an executive chairman would be part of required SEC filings. At least if the shares were listed on a US exchange.
This is in fact what the Fox lawyers said, I think yesterday, but they also claimed it was just an honorific of some kind, no real meaning. It didn't seem to satisfy the judge. Sad.
must .. reread .. original .. post, sorry.
But Kevin did leave out the part where one of the Fox lawyers told everybody, hey folks, it's all along been right there in the SEC filings that anyone can read-- too bad Dominion lawyers didn't catch it, no backsies, no recourse. Evidently though that comment must have called attention to certain discovery responsibilities that would fall on Fox lawyers regarding identified FNC executive personnel.
Delicious.
Isn't the “executive chair” a position that would be publicly known for a publicly traded company?
It might be presumptuous to believe that papa Murdoch is officially listed as an officer of FNC. Companies lie, after all. Just look at the Trump Organization.
Yahoo!!!! Will Faux be shut down? No more bullhorn for the orange genius.
From the NYT article:
“Dan K. Webb, a lawyer for Fox, pushed back on the assertion from Dominion, saying that both he and even Mr. Murdoch didn’t realize he also held the executive chair role at Fox News.”
This is such a vicious, shameless lie. How stupid do they think we are?
Webb should be disbarred. Murdoch should be stripped of his citizenship and deported. They are both enemies of America and of democracy.
Great quote, and it confirms what this whole process so far has shown-- that Fox News doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground. No bets which one of the two Rupert is.
Let's not jump to conclusions. The obvious follow-up would be:
"So, are you saying your client deliberately withheld information from you?"
Its a legal strategy to get the judge to make mistakes, which can be used on appeal. The Judge seems to know he is getting played and seems to be cautious with his temper and rulings. No way on earth $2400 an hour attorneys do an oopsy on discovery or hope the other side doesn't figure it out. Fox attorney's know they have lost already and are playing for the appeals court now.
"No way on earth $2400 an hour attorneys do an oopsy on discovery or hope the other side doesn't figure it out."
I've worked in biglaw litigation; I can confirm that (a) biglaw attorneys are far from infallible, and (b) even the best biglaw attorney is only as good as their client. I've never heard of anybody _deliberately_ screwing up on discovery so as to maybe-possibly increasing the number of issues for an appeal, not least because you never deliberately increase your chances of losing at trial to marginally increase your chances of prevailing on some minor issue on appeal.
In this case, I'd chalk this up to mostly Fox's fault as being an extremely shifty and unprofessional client.