(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Rumors Of Fox Settlement With Dominion? It's Tougher Than You Think. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-16 Twitter is abuzz with the speculation that Fox News is making a last second push to settle its $1.6 billion lawsuit with Dominion Voting Machines. The news has been all bad for Fox in this case. First, Dominion won almost every significant question on the case in summary judgement. Fox’s only remaining defense is that it did not act with actual malice when making false statements about Dominion. Hard to go from that to worse, but Fox managed it. Next, the court accused Fox of lying during discovery and threatened to open an investigation into it. Fox apologized to the court, admitting it screwed up, and pledged to be more honest in the future (tacitly admitting to being less than honest in the past). The effective admission of lying to the court bolstered the claims of a Fox News producer who claims the same Fox attorneys coached her to lie in an earlier deposition. So are Fox and Dominion on the verge of settlement? x Breaking via the @wsj: "Fox has made a late push to settle the dispute out of court, people familiar with the situation said Sunday." https://t.co/VdPwhYbSGU — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 16, 2023 The possibility of settlement is bolstered by a last minute decision by the court to delay the start of trial by a day. x This could be another signal that Fox News is working on a settlement with Dominion. https://t.co/ncxtBVQ4sf — Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) April 17, 2023 I agree the delay suggests the parties are at least talking. Judges love to give them time to do that, at least when they both sides ask for more time. Judges love settlements. Settlements get judges off the hook for a lot of work in trial. Let’s start with a basic truism. In settlement negotiations with Fox, Dominion has all the leverage. Sure, in any litigation there is always some risk at trial, but that thin thread is all Fox has. Dominion has already won from the judge most of what it has to prove, and Fox’s misconduct in court has put it in a precarious position otherwise. So with Dominion holding all the cards, settlement on terms highly favorable to it should be easy, and quick, right? I'm someone who has actually negotiated a settlement of a $1.6 billion case. The negotiations started with the other party (the government) losing at the Court of Appeals, and saying that wanted to settle in exchange for dropping any further (long shot) appeal (to the Supreme Court). Thus, as would be the case with Dominion we obviously had the negotiation leverage. The government quickly agreed to full monetary damages under a calculation favorable to our side. In my case, finalizing negotiations still took weeks, but for reasons not applicable here. My settlement involved over 1,000 clients. Calculating the settlement for each was a daunting accounting issue. Once accomplished the specific monetary settlement offers had to be communicated to all of those clients, and their approval ascertained. Try doing that with 1,000+ people. Some of the client corporations (hospitals) had multiple changes in leadership over the pendency of the case with the new leaders having no idea the case even existed. I will say the calls to them were fun as I advised them of the surprise money coming in, but all that took time. Dominion would not have that sort of delays, but trust me, closing a multi-billion dollar deal takes time. If this is serious, there will likely be more delays in the trial. Dominion and Fox have their own fine details to work out. Details arguably as time consuming as in my case. Such as the detailed specifics of the nature, frequency, intensity and emphasis for Fox's mea culpas that it was wrong. Again, Dominion has the leverage here and can demand much from Fox in conceding that Fox’s reporting against Dominion was false, even knowingly false. Working out the nuances of how Fox would admit this, who would admit this, and how strongly Fox would admit this, is likely very much at the heart of any settlement negotiations. Along with money, money is always an issue. What would my starting position be as a Dominion lawyer? I’d start with something like this: Each Fox personality that lied, Tucker, Hannity, Ingraham, Pirro, etc must admit they knowingly misled about Dominion, on the same programs they did so, with the same timing and emphasis that they did so. Fox must generally acknowledge it knowingly misreported about Dominion and to consistently report that in the future when commenting on anything to do with Dominion. Fox must agree to cooperate in the continuing lawsuit against codefendants. Giuliani, Powell, etc. Finally, there would be the matter of money. I'd start at a billion.Everything after is a tradeoff in greater admissions for less dollars. My point is that ironing out the detailed specifics of everything suggested above, of making the tradeoffs suggested in that last point, is a matter of complex, time consuming lawyeresque dialogue. Been there, done that, got the early retirement. If settlement is genuinely in the offing, at least if both parties think it is, then more than a one day deferral in trial will likely be required. If the judge agrees to future delay of trial, that suggests the parties have communicated that settlement discussions are serious. If that does not happen, that suggests settlement discussions broke down. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/16/2164304/-Rumors-Of-Fox-Settlement-With-Dominion-It-s-Tougher-Than-You-Think Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/