Sydney (Australia) (EFE) US Capitol in 2021.
The Australian Federal Court marked the process as “suspended/withdrawn” on its website on Friday, days after Fox News agreed to pay more than $780 million in the US to a voting machine company to finish another defamation proceedings, this time against the North American chain.
“Lachlan Murdoch has dropped his defamation suit against Crikey. He’ll pay Crikey’s legal costs. Both we and our client are very satisfied,” the Marque Lawyer firm, which represented Private Media, a group to which Crickey belongs, said today on social media.
For his part, Murdoch’s lawyer, John Churchill, said in a statement today that while his client was “confident that he would win” the lawsuit against the Australian outlet, he did not want “Crikey to continue using the court” for a campaign designed to “attract subscribers and increase your profits”.
Murdoch lawsuit in August
Murdoch sued Private Media in August over the article headlined: “Trump is a confirmed deranged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator,” posted June 29, 2022.
Murdoch’s lawyers claimed that the article insinuated that the businessman illegally conspired with former US President Donald Trump to incite a mob to march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 with the aim of preventing confirmation. of the result of the 2020 elections, where Trump himself lost.
Recently, Crickey’s representatives sought to add to the case thousands of documents about the process that ended Tuesday with the aforementioned agreement between Fox and the company Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the television network of spreading falsehoods about alleged fraud in the elections. Americans of 2020.
“In that case, in the US state of Delaware, the judge ruled that the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol were not relevant,” Churchill remarked today.
Murdoch’s lawyer further insisted that Dominion “made it clear that he would not argue that Fox News caused the events of January 6, and at no time did he argue that Mr. Murdoch was personally responsible” for what happened.
“However, this is what Crikey’s article alleged and what Crikey tries to argue in Australia,” added the lawyer for the son of tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who controls a large part of the media in the oceanic country with his conglomerate.