A last-minute settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems’ historic defamation lawsuit against Fox News, the parties announced in court Tuesday.
The settlement appears to have been brokered just before opening statements in the trial in Wilmington, Delaware.
After the jury was sworn in early Tuesday, an unexplained delay of several hours halted court proceedings, sparking speculation that another secret deal was in the works.
What this means: The last-minute agreement means the high-profile case is effectively over and cannot proceed to trial. A settlement with Dominion would spare influential Fox News executives and prominent broadcast personalities from testifying about its 2020 election coverage, which was riddled with lies about voter fraud.
Details of the settlement were not immediately available and may not be made public.
More about this: In its lawsuit, Dominion sought $1.6 billion in damages from Fox News. The right-wing network has loudly argued in pretrial proceedings that the numbers are inflated and fall short of accurately capturing the potential losses Dominion could incur as a result of FOX’s 2020 broadcasts.
Fox News and its parent company and defendant, Fox Corporation, say they have never defamed Dominion and call the lawsuit a meritless attack on freedom of the press. They denied Dominion’s claims that it facilitated these election conspiracies to salvage declining approval ratings after the 2020 election.
Although the Dominion lawsuit is now over, Fox News still faces a second major defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting technology company that was defamed on Fox shows after the 2020 election. The case is still under investigation and a trial is not expected to begin anytime soon.