Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News will return to court on Wednesday for the second day of a pre-trial hearing previewing many arguments in a closely watched $1.6bn defamation case.
Dominion is suing the rightwing network over its decision to repeatedly air false claims about its voting equipment in 2020 as Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the election.
Both sides are asking Eric Davis, a Delaware superior court judge, to rule in their favor ahead of trial.
Davis said on Tuesday he had not reached a decision. His ruling will probably set out the scope of issues for a trial scheduled for mid-April.
On Tuesday, Justin Nelson, a Dominion lawyer, presented a slew of internal communications from Fox News showing hosts, producers and executives all knew the claims about Dominion were false.
That evidence is in service of Dominion’s effort to prove that Fox News committed “actual malice” when it knew the statements were false or recklessly disregarded the truth when it published claims about Dominion.
On Wednesday, the hearing will feature the remainder of an argument from Erin Murphy, presenting Fox News’s case to the court.
Much of her argument on Tuesday focused on the idea that Fox News was not presenting facts to its audience, but rather what reasonable viewers would have understood to be allegations from Donald Trump and his lawyers.
She is expected to focus on why Fox News’s actions did not meet the “actual malice” standard required to prove defamation.
Davis peppered both sides with questions on Tuesday and at times seemed skeptical of some of Fox News’s arguments.
Part of its argument in the case is that it cannot be held liable for defamation because it was reporting newsworthy events in a neutral and dispassionate way.
Davis questioned whether Fox News’s reporting was neutral and dispassionate, pressing Murphy about tweets from the host Lou Dobbs that contained the hashtags “Maga” and “America First”.
Abby Grossberg, a Fox News staffer, separately sued the network this week, saying she was coerced by attorneys into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
