Fox News reached a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday, agreeing to pay more than $787 million to end a colossal two-year legal battle and avert a high-profile defamation trial. The agreement, finalized just as opening statements were set to begin, marks the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.
The $787.5 million payout is roughly half of the $1.6 billion that Dominion initially sought in its lawsuit. However, the sum is nearly 10 times Dominion's valuation from 2018 and approximately eight times its annual revenue in 2021, according to court filings.
Judge Eric Davis announced the resolution, stating, “The parties have resolved their case,” before dismissing the 12-member jury. Judge Davis credited the jury's presence with providing the impetus for the settlement and praised the lawyers from both sides, effectively gaveling out the anticipated media trial before it could commence.
In a statement, Fox News said it “acknowledge[s] the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” This refers to Judge Davis’s recent ruling that 20 Fox News broadcasts from late 2020 contained blatantly untrue assertions that Dominion rigged the presidential election. Despite this acknowledgment, a Dominion representative confirmed that Fox will not be required to admit on-air that it spread lies about Dominion.
The last-minute agreement means that influential Fox News executives and prominent on-air personalities, including Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, his CEO son Lachlan Murdoch, and top hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, will be spared from testifying about their 2020 election coverage. Damning emails, texts, and deposition testimony made public during the case had previously revealed that these figures, and many others at Fox, privately dismissed the vote-rigging claims against Dominion as “asinine” in 2020, even as those lies were broadcast.
Internal communications showed Rupert Murdoch privately thought the election denialism was “really crazy,” while Tucker Carlson stated he “passionately” hates Donald Trump and considered his presidency a “disaster.” Other Fox hosts, producers, fact-checkers, and senior executives privately described the on-air claims of a stolen election as “kooky,” “dangerously reckless,” and “mind-blowingly nuts.” These revelations had generated months of blistering headlines for Fox as the case progressed toward trial, and the settlement now deprives Dominion of a chance to further expose Fox's dishonesty during a weeks-long trial.
Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, which was also a defendant, maintain they never defamed Dominion and assert the case was a meritless assault on First Amendment press freedoms. In its Tuesday statement, Fox said, “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
Speculation of a settlement had intensified in recent days, particularly after the court announced a one-day delay to the trial, which was originally scheduled to begin on Monday. The racially diverse jury of six men and six women had been brought back into court, ready for the historic proceedings, but were instead told by Judge Davis that their presence had helped spur the settlement. “Your presence here, short compared to what you thought, and uneventful in a certain sense, was extremely important,” Davis told the panel. “Without you, the parties would not have been able to resolve their situation.”
Many on the Dominion side hailed the settlement as a victory for democracy and truth. “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said outside court on Tuesday.
While the Dominion case is now concluded, Fox News still faces a second major defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting technology company similarly targeted on Fox News’ shows after the 2020 election. That case remains in the discovery process, with a trial not expected anytime soon. Dominion, for its part, also has pending lawsuits against right-wing TV networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as against Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell, all of whom deny wrongdoing.
