Lachlan Murdoch drops defamation case against Australian news site after Dominion settlement

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch is dropping his defamation suit against Australian news website Crikey over a column linking him to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

In a statement, Murdoch’s lawyer, John Churchill, cited the recent settlement of Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox Corp. and Fox News to drop the lawsuit. In the lawsuit, which may not begin until the following year, Crikey wanted to contribute material gathered during the discovery process to the Dominion lawsuit, in which Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle the lawsuit and avoid litigation .

“It is well known that Crikey admits that the allegations made in the article about Mr. Murdoch is untrue,” Churchill said. “In her recent attempt to change her defense strategy, Crikey sought to transfer thousands of pages of documents from another jurisdiction from a defamation case that has now been settled.”

The defamation case stems from a June 29, 2022 analysis that identified the Murdochs as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the January 6 Capitol attacks. The case was brought against Private Media, Crikey’s parent company.

The judge on the Dominion lawsuit, Eric Davis, told lawyers last week that he will not allow the January 6 attacks to be brought up in a trial because he believes it would unfairly harm Fox.

Churchill said in his statement that Dominion also did not claim that Murdoch was responsible for January 6. Churchill said Murdoch “remains confident that the court will ultimately rule in his favour, but he will no longer allow Crikey to use the court to try a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and to carry out a marketing campaign pilot.” people have to attract.” subscribers and increase their profits.”

A Crikey representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.