Douglas E. Mirell

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The Dominion Case: Fox News Stumbles Into 1st Amendment Fight of the Century With One Arm Tied Behind Its Back

April 16, 2023Media Mention
The Wrap

Litigation partner and First Amendment expert Doug Mirell spoke to TheWrap about the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News Network and its parent Fox Corporation.

Excerpts:

“Fox is in trouble,” veteran litigator Douglas Mirell told TheWrap. “Serious, serious trouble.”

Mirell and other legal experts say that at the outset Dominion appears to have a strong case.

“[From a liability standpoint,] I’m less persuaded that Fox had people on as guests spouting lies than with their on-air hosts endorsing those lies . . . at a point in time when it was absolutely clear that these claims did not hold water,” Mirell said.

“This is one of those . . . very rare [cases] where the evidence points to the existence of ‘actual malice,’” Mirell said. “[W]hen you[r] [hosts] . . . say words to the effect that ‘Boy, this is really bad news, Sidney Powell,’ or ‘This is really awful, Rudy Giuliani,’ you essentially pander to your guests’ conspiracy theory and then endorse it. That’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s why this case is so terribly unusual.”

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