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Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy
Smartmatic responds to Fox in new brief: "This is not a game. The First Amendment does not provide the Fox Defendants a Get Out Of Jail Free card. The Fox Defendants do not get a do-over with their reporting now that they have been sued." http://cnn.it/3saXIPx

Last month, Dominion also sued Fox News. Together, the two suits represent a billion-dollar challenge to the Fox empire, which, after Smartmatic filed its lawsuit, canceled the Fox Business program hosted by Mr. Dobbs.

“The filing only confirms our view that the suit is meritless and Fox News covered the election in the highest tradition of the First Amendment,” the network said in a statement late Monday.

Fox’s motion, as well as those of its anchors, argued that the mentions of Smartmatic were part of its reporting on a newsworthy event that it was duty-bound to cover: A president’s refusal to concede an election and his insistence that his opponent’s victory was not legitimate.

But the response Smartmatic filed on Monday, which runs for 120 pages, said that argument amounted to wishful thinking and that Fox had not covered the claims about Smartmatic objectively or fairly.

“The Fox defendants wedded themselves to Giuliani and Powell during their programs,” the brief said. “They cannot distance themselves now.”

Fox will have several weeks to respond to the brief, and a judge will eventually consider whether to allow Smartmatic’s case to proceed.

JUST IN: Smartmatic responds to Fox: "This is not a game"

Speaking of Fox... In a 121-page Monday night filing, Smartmatic responded to Fox's recent motion to dismiss its lawsuit. "This is not a game," the filing said. "The First Amendment does not provide the Fox Defendants a Get Out Of Jail Free card. The Fox Defendants do not get a do-over with their reporting now that they have been sued." The filing argued that while Fox might "attempt to cloak themselves in the First Amendment," the "cloak does not fit."

I spoke briefly by phone with Smartmatic attorney Erik Connolly about the filing. Connolly said that thematically, the filing aims to "hold Fox and the anchors responsible" for their coverage. "That is the theme of their litigations and the theme of their opposition," Connolly said. He added that "nothing" in Fox's motion to dismiss surprised him and maintained that Smartmatic has a "straightforward case of defamation" against Fox.

>> On a related note: Fox's top lawyer, Lily Fu Claffee, is leaving the network after three years as it faces billions in lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion. Fox said Monday she'll be replaced by Bernard Gugar who worked for Google and Oprah...

Uninformed wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:35 pm 8/17 09:30, New York Supreme Court on August 17 will hear arguments from Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Fox Corporation in their bid for the dismissal of a $2.7 billion defamation case brought by Smartmatic.

tek wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:16 pm

Uninformed wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:35 pm 8/17 09:30, New York Supreme Court on August 17 will hear arguments from Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Fox Corporation in their bid for the dismissal of a $2.7 billion defamation case brought by Smartmatic.

Jim wrote: ↑Tue Aug 17, 2021 12:48 pm
Any news?

A Fox News lawyer was grilled by a judge about the network’s extensive coverage of false claims that the voting technology firm Smartmatic Corp. conspired against Donald Trump in November’s presidential election, as Fox seeks dismissal of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit.

At a hearing Tuesday in Manhattan, Justice David Cohen asked Fox to explain why former anchor Lou Dobbs repeatedly claimed on air in November and December that there was new, “groundbreaking” evidence of voter fraud even after U.S. officials had debunked such claims.

“That is clearly his opinion,” Fox News attorney Paul Clement said. “It was a widely shared opinion at the time.”

...

Smartmatic lawyer Erik Connolly said at the hearing that Fox’s reports weren’t protected because the false claims about Smartmatic didn’t stem from coverage of a legitimate government investigation. The network did a “dance” with Giuliani and Powell to get their message out, he said.

Connolly took aim at Fox’s assertion that Dobbs has additional protection because his show was based on his opinions rather than on fact-based reporting, arguing that Fox and Dobbs “present that show as a news program.”

“Mr. Dobbs did everything he could to reinforce the notion that he and his guests were providing concrete facts to the audience members, and they were facts that other news networks weren’t telling them or the government wasn’t paying attention to,” Connolly said.

orlylicious wrote: ↑Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:07 pm Erik Wemple did a thread on it. The judge didn't say when he would rule.

Two more shoes have dropped in voting machine giant Smartmatic’s legal offensive against television broadcasters and talking heads of the political right. Smartmatic sued One America News and Newsmax for defamation on Wednesday, more than half a year after filing a multi-billion dollar civil action against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Sidney Powell.

“The first time it happened could be a mistake,” the 197-page federal complaint begins. “The second, third, fourth and fiftieth times it happened were intentional choices. OANN had every opportunity to do the right thing after the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. It could have reported the truth. Instead, OANN chose to do the wrong thing every time. It reported a lie.”

Smartmatic filed the lawsuit against OANN in the District of D.C., and the company separately sued Newsmax in Delaware Superior Court, framing the network’s conduct as a quest to lure Fox viewers.

“It is not easy to climb the ladder and get to the top,” the complaint against Newsmax begins. “It is even harder to climb if one is following the rules when others are not. Newsmax has long wanted to ascend the viewership ladder. It has now shown that it will cross legal and ethical lines to climb the ladder and push off the one at the top”

The lawsuit against OAN has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who is also presiding over Dominion’s lawsuits against Fox News, MyPillow, Giuliani and others, which have been designated as related.

Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats wrote: BREAKING: A judge orders FOX “News” to immediately start handing over incriminating texts, messages, and emails to Smartmatic voting machine company in Smartmatic’s massive $2.7 billion lawsuit against FOX for spreading Trump’s Big Lie. RT TO THANK THE JUDGE FOR STANDING STRONG!

Fox producer's warning against Jeanine Pirro surfaces in Dominion defamation suit
September 6, 20225:00 AM ET

The November 2020 email from an anguished Fox News news producer to colleagues sent up a flare amid a fusillade of false claims.

The producer warned: Fox cannot let host Jeanine Pirro back on the air. She is pulling conspiracy theories from dark corners of the Web to justify then-President Donald Trump's lies that the election had been stolen from him. The existence of the email, confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of it, is first publicly disclosed by NPR in this story. Fox News declined comment.

[...]

A repeat target was Dominion Voting Systems, the election machine and technology company. Trump and his allies alleged on Fox that Dominion was engaged in a conscious effort to throw the 2020 race to Joe Biden. They implied and falsely asserted on Fox programs that Dominion's machines and software either discarded Trump's votes or transferred them to Biden. Dominion argues their false claims were frequently egged on by Fox's own stars.

The producer's email is among the voluminous correspondence acquired by Dominion's attorneys as part of its discovery of evidence in a $1.6 billion defamation suit it filed against Fox News and its parent company. Dominion alleges it has been "irreparably harmed" by the lies, conspiracy theories and wild claims of election fraud that aired on Fox.

woodworker wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 10:29 pm This, just as with many other things, makes me very sad.

New:

Smartmatic Subpoenas Ex-OAN Host and Trump Lawyer Christina Bobb in Defamation Lawsuit

Appeals Court Declines To Dismiss Smartmatic Lawsuit Against Fox News
By Ted Johnson
February 14, 2023 12:44pm

A New York appellate court declined Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and personalities including Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo. The appeals court ruling (read it here) stems from Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network, contending that its personalities and guests amplified Donald Trump and his team’s unfounded claims that the election systems company rigged the 2020 presidential election. The ruling was not on whether the network was liable for defamation, but that Smartmatic had adequately presented its claims to proceed to the next stage of litigation.

The network has argued that it is protected by the First Amendment, as it was spotlighting a matter undoubtedly in the public interest, as a U.S. president, Donald Trump, was challenging the results of the election. The appellate judges wrote that Smartmatic’s claims “allege that defendants Fox News, Dobbs, and Bartiromo did not merely report the newsworthy fact that the President’s campaign lawyers were recklessly making statements conveying false information. Rather, the complaint alleges in detailed fashion that in their coverage and commentary, Fox News, Dobbs, and Bartiromo effectively endorsed and participated in the statements with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about, whether the assertions or implications that plaintiffs had participated in election fraud had any basis in truth or were supported by any reliable evidence.”

The judges also ordered that the claims against another Fox News personality, Jeanine Pirro, be reinstated, along with some of their claims against Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney who had been a guest on the network in the aftermath of the election. The lower court judge, David Cohen, dismissed those claims last year while otherwise letting much of the rest of Smartmatic’s case proceed. The judges did say that claims against Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, should be dismissed, but will allow Smartmatic to refile that portion of their case. The judges also wrote that they declined “to find that plaintiffs should be deemed limited purpose public figures required to allege facts that, if true, would ‘clearly and convincingly’ show defamation with actual malice.” Shortly after Smartmatic filed its lawsuit in 2021, Fox dropped Dobbs from its Fox Business schedule. He is no longer with the network.

Another election systems company, Dominion Voting Systems, filed a defamation suit against Fox News and Fox Corp. in a Delaware court, and that trial is scheduled to begin in April. A Fox News spokesperson said, “There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud. We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.” Smartmatic’s counsel, Erik Connolly, said, “We look forward to holding Fox News and the other defendants accountable in court. Smartmatic feels gratified by the decision of the New York appellate court, which has rejected all calls for dismissal by Fox News and its cohorts.”

Good morning from New York.

After weeks of their private message spilling into the public domain, Fox News returns to court to face off against a different rival: Smartmatic.

I'm covering those proceedings for
@LawCrimeNews
.

Background on that case:

Abby Grossberg, the former Fox producer who alleges she was coerced into giving misleading testimony in Dominion's lawsuit against Fox, has now been subpoenaed in Smartmatic's lawsuit against the Fox

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Fri Apr 07, 2023 10:02 am That sounds fun.