Smartmatic’s Defamation Suit Against Fox Corp. (and Not Just Fox News) Can Go Forward
From yesterday’s N.Y. intermediate appellate court decision in Smartmatic USA Corp. v. Fox Corp., by Judges Peter Moulton, Barbara Kapnick, Saliann Scarpulla, Manuel Mendez, and Kelly O’Neill Levy:
In our prior decision in this matter, we modified the motion court’s order to, among other things, dismiss the causes of action asserted against Fox Corporation without prejudice to repleading. With respect to Fox Corporation, we found that “the complaint does not adequately allege that any Fox Corporation employee played an affirmative role in the publication of the challenged defamatory statements,” nor that “Fox Corporation wholly dominated Fox News so as to [be] liable for the acts of its subsidiary. We explained that “[e]ven if reasonable, the inference that Fox Corporation, merely by virtue of its ownership of Fox News and its profits, actively took part in the procurement, composition, and publication of the challenged statements, does not alone suffice to allege defamation claims against a corporate parent based on conduct by its wholly owned subsidiary.”
In the first amended complaint, plaintiffs reasserted the causes of action against defendant Fox News Network and the individual defendants, which we had described as “based on significant allegations that [the guest campaign-lawyer defendants] made defamatory statements about plaintiffs’ involvement in the 2020 Presidential election while knowing that the statement
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