New York City’s pension funds and the state of Oregon took legal action on Tuesday against Fox Corporation, alleging in a lawsuit that the Fox News parent company failed shareholders by allowing the right-wing channel to recklessly spread lies about the 2020 election that opened it up to a pair of historic defamation cases.
The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the Delaware Court of Chancery and named Fox Corporation board members and its executives as defendants, accused the media company of having chosen to “invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News,” according to an excerpt of the complaint provided by the state of Oregon.
The lawsuit represents the most serious shareholder legal action taken against Fox since it settled a historic defamation lawsuit brought by election technology company Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year for a record $787.5 million. Fox, which has maintained it is proud of its dishonest 2020 election coverage, still faces an even larger, $2.7 billion lawsuit from election technology company Smartmatic.
“Fox’s board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation,” Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, said in a statement on Tuesday. “A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox’s reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability.”
“The board of Fox Corporation took a massive risk in pursuing profits by perpetuating and peddling known falsehoods,” Ellen Rosenblum, attorney general of Oregon, said in a separate statement. “The directors’ choices exposed themselves and the company to liability and exposed their shareholders to significant risks. That is the crux of our lawsuit, and we look forward to making our case in court.”
A spokesperson for Fox Corporation declined to comment on the lawsuit
