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MANHATTAN (CN) — Voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News regained momentum Monday, ending a monthslong pause that followed the death of right-wing political commentator Lou Dobbs.
Florida-based Smartmatic sued Fox in February 2021, accusing the right-wing news organization of stoking far-right conspiracy theories about the voting technology company after the 2020 presidential election. Dobbs was also named as a defendant in the case.
But when Dobbs died in July, the case was paused as the parties sought to find a legal representative to stand in for the late TV host. Earlier this month, Cohen officially allowed his wife Debi Dobbs to take his place in the complaint.
At a hearing Monday in New York state court, Justice David Cohen set a Jan. 29, 2025, discovery deadline that pleased neither party. Smartmatic had wanted to speed things up, asking for Dec. 9 deadline, while Fox News wanted an extension until Feb. 28, 2025.
Edward C. Wipper, an attorney with Kishner Miller representing Smartmatic, insisted that there’s no reason to further delay the case when he asked for a quicker discovery deadline.
“Much of that delay has been on Fox,” he told the judge. “We continue to be prejudiced in the delay that has continued in the trial.”
Fox has refused to give dates for expert depositions or respond to motions, he added, which has exacerbated the case’s slow progress.
K. Winn Allen, an attorney with Kirkland Ellis representing Fox, said a December deadline would be unreasonable with the amount of discovery that has yet to be completed. It took months to officially replace Lou Dobbs on the complaint, the attorney added, disagreeing with accusations that the news company intentionally delayed progress.
“We weren’t at all trying to delay things,” Allen said. “We were trying to come up with a practical way to approach all the discovery that’s come up.”
Fox News countersued, accusing Smartmatic of trying to suppress the cable news giant’s free speech.
Smartmatic says Fox and its commentators “knew the election was not rigged or fixed” and reported misinformation that the company committed election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
In addition to Fox News and Dobbs, Smartmatic also names former Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.
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