Fox News claims Smartmatic is failing business looking for litigation lottery ticket: court docs
Lawyers for Fox News are asking a New York judge to throw out Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against the cable network — arguing that the voting technology firm is a “failing business” in search of a “litigation lottery ticket.”“Smartmatic is not Dominion,” attorneys for Fox News argued in their motion for a summary judgment that was filed on Wednesday in state court in Manhattan.In April 2023, Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp, agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the network of broadcasting false claims that its machines rigged the 2020 US presidential election.In February 2021, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its corporate parent as well as several of its hosts, alleging that they knowingly aired false claims that Smartmatic tipped the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.Fox News is a subsidiary of Fox Corp, which shares a common owner with The Post’s parent News Corp.Fox News argued in the motion for summary judgment that Smartmatic’s defamation case cannot be compared to the Dominion lawsuit.“Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was a failing business without a significant presence in the United States entering the 2020 Presidential Election,” the network’s lawyers said in the court filing.It described Smartmatic as a company “mired in a decade of business failure” due to “inadequate technology, missing certifications, and involvement in multiple highly controversial elections.”Fox also noted in court documents that Smartmatic’s leadership had been under federal investigation for bribery and money laundering, and that its witnesses had invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 200 times.In its own motion for summary judgment which was filed with Manhattan state court on Wednesday, Smartmatic accused Fox News hosts of having “systematically promoted the inflammatory and false narrative that Smartmatic… had deployed so...