Scripps News: Professor Leslie Tenzer on Smartmatic's defamation suit against Fox News

Well, it's been a month since the

defamation

law

suit

between Fox News and Dominion came to an end with a substantial settlement of nearly $800 million, but as we know Fox News is far from out of the legal turmoil between legal battles. ongoing is a

defamation

law

suit

filed. by

smartmatic

, which is another election technology company, and they are seeking a staggering $2.7 billion in damages alleging that Fox News aired over 100 false statements about their software during the 2020 election, not only are the former mayor involved of New York Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Cindy Powell in the lawsuit, but Fox News hosts Jeanine pyro Maria Bartaramo and Lou Dobbs are also named as defendants joining Morning Rush at this time Leslie Tenzer

professor

of the Elizabeth Hobb School of Law and Pace University.

She also hosts Fat's Law section on podcasts for students studying law. Thank you. So much for being with us this morning, I appreciate it, thanks for having me, so Fox is having a great spring, they have this deal, they fire their star Tucker, we don't know where that drama is going. We'll get back to Twitter, but there are still contractual ties between the two that could get complicated, we don't know, we'll see, but I imagine legally Smartmatic looked at Dominio and said, ooh, they did good, what can we do to have a good time? payment, huh, like they're enjoying it right now.

What do you think the moral of the story would be for Smartmatic, which looks at how Dominion conducted its case and then in one of those stories, a big lawyer makes a big statement about Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson? I mean, basically, what happened in the Dominion case was there was irrefutable evidence and so they had these statements that would have really destroyed Fox News if they had come out and put those, you know, defendants on the stand and I think that's really what led Fox to make a deal with Dominion at the 11th hour and when you talk about the implications if Fox News decides not to make a deal with Smartmatic, we've heard Lachlan Murdoch say that this will go to trial, so we talked a little bit about what that path looks like, you know, keep in mind that the Dominion case was literally settled, so if this goes to trial, and I suspect it will, if the um

smartmatic

doesn't have the kind of family, you know the harmful information. against you, then it is important to prove the elements of defamation.

The problem is that when you have to prove defamation against a public figure, you have to show that the defendant in this Fox News case acted with actual malice, which is actually an intent to defame or recklessness. contempt and what Fox News has on its side in this case is the idea that it was just reporting, it wasn't smearing, in fact it was repeating accusations from people who don't work for its corporation and that's why Fox News has a chance to win the case, actual malice is a very high bar because it should be right and there are some people in this country who want to eliminate those things so that it's easier to sue journalists and you know, that's it. debate about freedom of the press and a completely different topic, but it's interesting, but to me, besides the big check, the interesting thing about Dominion was that they helped tear back the curtain and gave us all a glimpse of how Fox News really works. text messages and you know the meetings and who you know all of that um and for me, if you have proof in writing and in text that we know that these claims of voter fraud are not true and that some of our most important people really don't They like Trump. but we'll get up on that anchor desk and say yes, which means you're demonstrating deliberate, deliberate lying, uh, deceit, uh, and that doesn't speak to Mal, why would you intentionally lie if it's not to achieve some end? ?

Can you connect those two? It absolutely does and that's why Dominion settled, but in order for Smartmatic to be successful or get a settlement, they have to have that information against Fox in their case, so the information they had in the Dominion case was specific to that case. Fox versus Dominion versus Fox, so Smartmatic needs to get that information, in other words, a deaf, a deposition for a lawsuit is not necessarily a debt business, you are definitely a deposition, sorry for another lawsuit, the other thing is when they arrived to an agreement if you read the statement.

Fox was very clever. In fact, I showed it to my law students and we took it apart because they really didn't admit any type of liability in a way that set them up for failure in another very interesting, very interesting lawsuit and this could really have big implications, as you mentioned about to be able to sue journalists. Sue

news

organizations, so we'll definitely have to wait and see if that plays out over the long legal process or whether it comes to a settlement on The 11th Hour Leslie tens her

professor

at Pace University's Elizabeth Hubbs School of Law .

Thank you very much for inviting me.