Smartmatic Can’t Justify $2.7 Billion Claim in Defamation Suit

• Fox Information filed a counterclaim in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit around election conspiracy theories.
• It suggests the demand from customers for $2.7 billion in damages was “fanciful” due to the fact Smartmatic has been dropping money.
• The headline-grabbing number, Fox News argued, was intended to “chill” free of charge speech.

Lawyers for Fox News argued that Smartmatic has been losing dollars for many years and could not potentially justify its $2.7 billion demand in its defamation lawsuit in excess of election conspiracy theories, according to a scathing courtroom filing Thursday.

The new filing argues that the election technologies firm’s lawsuit, initially filed in February 2021, was built to “draw in headlines and chill speech.”

“On top rated of the presently-sizeable expenditures that Fox Information has incurred and will carry on to incur defending against Smartmatic’s novel legal theories, Fox Information ought to also incur expenses to debunk Smartmatic’s multibillion-greenback damages assert,” attorneys for Fox News wrote in the courtroom filing, which was received by Insider. “And that is to say absolutely nothing of the chilling outcome these a declare has on other individuals who may well not be capable to protect them selves or face even a minimum hazard of these staggering legal responsibility if their own speech arrives below very similar assault.”

The primary lawsuit alleged that Fox Information, its hosts Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, its former host Lou Dobbs, and the election conspiracy theorists Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell all defamed Smartmatic by the cable giant’s protection of the phony conspiracy principle that Smartmatic manipulated the results of the 2020 election. Powell and Giuliani, legal professionals who were both employed by then-President Donald Trump, went on Fox News exhibits and pushed those phony theories. The Fox Information hosts, in accordance to Smartmatic, both did not do more than enough to press again versus the statements or tried out to advance them.

New York Condition Supreme Courtroom Judge David B. Cohen tossed out parts of the lawsuit past 7 days, ruling that Smartmatic hadn’t sufficiently proved some of its claims, but permitted the bulk of the circumstance to stand. He also dismissed the claims towards Powell on jurisdictional grounds. Fox Information claimed it would attractiveness Cohen’s ruling upholding the remaining statements. A Smartmatic spokesperson previously told Insider it was deciding no matter whether to attraction the ruling concerning Powell or activate a similar lawsuit towards her in Washington, DC.

AP Photograph/Ted Shaffrey

The new submitting from Fox Information delivers a declare against Smartmatic beneath New York’s Anti-SLAPP law, which is meant to deter frivolous lawsuits. It argues that, in its segments relating to Smartmatic, Fox Information was basically undertaking newsworthy reporting about statements by the president and his surrogates, together with acquiring its hosts provide their First Amendment-safeguarded view.

“These headline-grabbing promises are designed to provide as a warning to other people to feel 2 times before doing exercises their personal totally free speech legal rights, lest the price tag of undertaking so prove also major to bear,” Fox News’s legal professionals wrote.

Fox Information employed College of Chicago legislation professor Daniel R. Fischel to review Smartmatic’s funds. The report he created uncovered the business has steadily shed profits in the previous decade. According to the report, the claims of which have not been independently verified by Insider, Smartmatic has shed virtually $100 million in profits in the a long time main up to the 2020 presidential election.

Claims that Smartmatic stood to make $2.7 billion if not for Fox News, the court submitting argued, ended up “fanciful” and the lawsuit meritless.

“As Smartmatic’s possess public filings mirror, by the time the 2020 presidential election rolled all around, it was no financial juggernaut on the cusp of earning billions in revenue,” Fox News legal professionals wrote. “To the contrary, Smartmatic had been in the red just about every of the preceding 4 a long time, combining for practically $100 million in losses, and its revenues experienced not exceeded $200 million due to the fact 2013.”

In a assertion to Insider, Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly reported that, irrespective of Fox News’s promises about the lawsuit, Cohen clearly found it had benefit.

“It is ironic that Fox claims that Smartmatic’s lawsuit is with out foundation after the court docket discovered that the lawsuit had a considerable basis in law and actuality,” Connolly reported. “The choices of courts throughout the country about these defamatory statements speak for them selves and, the courts are saying something really different than Fox.”