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MANHATTAN (CN) — A New York judge on Friday said court documents from a Murdoch family trust dispute are fair game for discovery in election technology company Smartmatic’s defamation case against Fox News.
Ruling from the bench at a two-hour hearing on a slate of motions from both parties, Judge David Cohen tossed a judicial hearing officer’s finding that the material from court proceedings in Nevada was not relevant to Smartmatic’s case.
Smartmatic sued Fox Corporation and its right-wing news network in early 2021 over broadcasts that falsely claimed the company interfered in the 2020 election.
Attorneys for Fox told Cohen that the Nevada proceedings had nothing to do with whether Fox executives were involved in the programming, and instead dealt with a 2023 amendment to how the family trust will be governed in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s death.
“It’s very unlikely the material from the Nevada case is going to be relevant here," Kirkland & Ellis attorney Winn Allen said. “There’s nothing in the public records that indicates the trust dispute in Nevada had anything to do with Smartmatic.”
Attorney Nicole Wrigley of Benesch Law said Smartmatic takes a different view on relevancy altogether before Cohen ruled in her client’s favor.
“Editorial control, and the scope of that control, can mean many different things,” Wrigley said. “We have a fundamentally different view of what is relevant as to Fox Corporation’s control and what that means in practice.”
Cohen issued four other rulings on various discovery and redaction disputes regarding the judicial hearing officer’s findings as the parties move toward summary judgment arguments in November.
Toward the end of Friday’s hearing, the media company’s attorneys asked to delay that proceeding. After a heated dissent from Smartmatic’s team, Cohen declined to do so.
Earlier this year, Fox News lost a bid to depose billionaire Reid Hoffman, who invested $25 million into the long-running litigation.
A representative for Fox did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday’s rulings.
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