By Marshall Cohen | CNN
The voting technology company Smartmatic can move forward with its defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation, a New York judge ruled Wednesday, dealing a blow to the parent company of Fox News, which is already fighting the massive lawsuit over its repeated airing of 2020 election lies.
The decision from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge David Cohen represents a significant setback to Fox’s corporate leadership, including the powerful Murdoch family, who will now face more scrutiny in the litigation. Cohen already let the case proceed against Fox News — and on Wednesday, he rejected a request by Fox Corporation to throw out the claims against the parent company.
The lawsuit was filed in the wake of the 2020 election, when Fox repeatedly gave airtime to far-right figures who promoted outrageous and debunked claims that Smartmatic rigged the presidential election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. They did this even though on-air anchors, top producers and executives privately admitted that the election wasn’t stolen.
The judge said Smartmatic’s case was strong enough to proceed against the parent company because it has “sufficiently alleged that (Fox) Corp. employees acted with malice by purposely and deliberating publishing knowingly false stories about (Smartmatic) in order to benefit (Fox) Corp.’s financial interest.”
Smartmatic has “sufficiently alleged in their amended complaint that (Fox) Corp. employees played an affirmative role in the publication of the defamation at issue,” Cohen concluded.
The parent corporation had argued that it shouldn’t be involved in the defamation case because it only had general oversight of Fox News itself. Further, Fox Corp. argued there wasn’t proof that any corporate employees “directed” the allegedly defamatory statements to be aired.
Fox denies defaming anyone and claims that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment.
“We will be…
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