NEW YORK — Fox News can’t dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic Corp. over false claims the network aired about the voting technology company’s role in the 2020 presidential election, a New York state court judge ruled.
The setback for Fox on Tuesday wasn’t a total win for Smartmatic. The company’s claims against former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell were dismissed, as were its claims against Fox on-air personality Jeanine Pirro. Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs must still face the suit, the judge said.
The mixed ruling by Justice David Cohen also dismissed some claims against Rudy Giuliani, a longtime attorney for former President Donald Trump. The company will be allowed to re-plead those claims.
Cohen’s decision is the latest twist in a legal saga that began after Smartmatic and a competitor, Dominion Voting Systems Inc., were accused by Trump supporters of being at the center of a vast international conspiracy to rig the election against the former president. That false claim was echoed by conservative news outlets and ultimately helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Giuliani and Powell previously lost their efforts to dismiss similar defamation suits filed by Dominion, meaning the high-profile supporters of the conspiracy theory still have to contend with legal fallout from the matter. Dominion’s suit against Fox also survived a motion to dismiss.
Fox News Media said in a statement that it plans to appeal as well as file suit against Smartmatic under New York’s Anti Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation statute, known as the anti-SLAPP law, which bars the filing of cases intended to chill free speech.
“We will also continue to litigate these baseless claims by filing a counterclaim for fees and costs under New York’s anti-SLAPP statute to prevent the full-blown assault on the First Amendment which stands in stark contrast to the highest tradition of American journalism,” Fox said in the statement.
The judge on Tuesday said Fox may have contradicted itself by trying to distance the network from Powell and Giuliani’s on-air statements. In court filings, Fox argued that it repeatedly asked the high-profile Trump supporters “for proof substantiating their accusations” about Smartmatic and that they “failed to produce any.”
“However, this fact can also support plaintiffs’ claim that Fox News had reason to suspect that what it was broadcasting was false, and nevertheless continued to allow Powell and Giuliani to appear on its network,” the judge said.
The judge ruled that the claims alleging financial damage caused by Giuliani weren’t specific enough, and that Pirro’s remarks regarding the election conspiracy weren’t directly about Smartmatic or may have applied to Dominion.
“Although Pirro states elsewhere that the Democrats ‘stole votes,’ she does not specify that the votes were stolen by using” Smartmatic software, the judge said. “Therefore, the complaint is dismissed as against Pirro.”
The claims against Powell were tossed out on purely jurisdiction grounds, meaning her statements and actions were tied closely enough to New York.
“Despite appearing on a broadcast emanating from New York, her defamatory utterance was not specifically targeted at this state given that Fox News is broadcasted across the country,” the judge said.
