The beginning of the much-anticipated defamation case between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News has been delayed by one day, until Tuesday, to allow both parties to hold conversations about the possibility of a settlement, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.
He suggested the trial will still continue as scheduled, with prospective jurors expected to arrive on Tuesday morning. Jury selection had been scheduled to conclude on Monday and then both sides were expected to give opening statements, kicking off a weeks-long trial.
Voting technology company Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network alleging that Fox guests and hosts defamed the company and severely damaged its business by connecting it to a plot to fraudulently steal the 2020 presidential election.
The judge announced the delay on Sunday night and said Monday he would not give any further information about the cause. “This is not a press conference,” he said. “I don’t do that.”
But two people familiar with the case said the two sides are scheduled to meet Monday to determine if a last-minute deal to avoid trial could be brokered. One of the people said the judge had asked the parties to make a final effort to settle the issue before proceeding with a trial.
The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose sensitive information. Spokespeople for Dominion and for Fox News’s parent company, Fox Corp., declined to comment.
Late settlement talks were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which, like Fox News, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s family. Fox and Dominion engaged in a round of mediation in December 2022 but were unable to reach a settlement agreement at that time, the court has previously said.
If the case proceeds to trial, a jury would ultimately decide how much to award Dominion in damages; the voting technology company’s lawsuit sought $1 billion in “lost enterprise value” and $600 million in lost profits. Fox has aggressively contested Dominion’s figures as out of line with the voting technology company’s value.
On Sunday, Fox filed a motion claiming Dominion is “walking away” from $600 million in lost profits. The motion from Fox included an email sent by a Dominion lawyer Friday that the company “will not be presenting its claim for lost profits damages to the jury, given that it is duplicative of the lost enterprise value damages.” A Dominion spokeswoman said in a statement to The Post that “the damages claim remains.” The $600 million had been Dominion’s projection of the profits they were on track to lose over the next eight years, according to the original lawsuit.
In the weeks leading up to the start of the trial, Davis issued adverse rulings for Fox, constraining its legal strategy. For one, Davis ruled that Fox cannot contest that the statements it aired about Dominion were false and harmful to the company. Instead, the trial will hinge on whether Fox aired the falsehoods with “actual malice” — that is, with knowledge the statements were false or without regard to their truth or falsehood. Plaintiffs must establish that a defendant acted with actual malice to prove a libel or defamation claim under a nearly 60-year-old standard established by the Supreme Court.
Fox also faces a potentially challenging jury pool. The trial is scheduled to be held in Delaware, where Dominion is incorporated. Therefore, jurors will be drawn from among the state’s electorate, which voted overwhelmingly in the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, one of the state’s most popular politicians.
A settlement could help Fox avoid several weeks of potentially embarrassing courtroom testimony from some of its biggest stars. Popular Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo are scheduled to testify, as could Murdoch, the 92-year-old chairman and chief executive of Fox Corp.
There has been heavy media interest in the case, and reporters began lining up outside the courthouse before dawn so they could get a seat inside.
Pretrial discovery produced reams of internal Fox communications showing the network’s hosts and employees bad-mouthing one another, voicing doubt about claims aired on the network and castigating Trump.
Any settlement could come at a price. Dominion officials have insisted they would not settle without a full-throated apology and acknowledgment from Fox that it aired false information — a position that could put the network at odds with many viewers and Trump, who is again running for president.
Jury selection began Thursday and had been scheduled to conclude late last week, but the judge announced late Thursday that several prospective jurors were unable to return to court on Friday and that he would conclude the process Monday instead.
Paul Farhi, Patrick Marley and Elahe Izadi contributed to this report.