this tuesday night good evening once again, i stephanie ruhle. the parties have resolved thei case those words from the judge brought the dominion fox new defamation case to an an before the jury heard from a single witness late today, fox agreed to nine figure payout to settle the lawsuit, 787 point $ million, a little less tha half of the 1. 6 billion the were suing for fox has admitted to telling lies about dominion, tha caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and th customers that we serve. nothing can ever make up for that the deal officially ends th legal battle over whether fo defamed dominion when it broadcasts conspiracy theories about its voting machines in the 2020 presidential election those included false claim dominion used is votin machines to rig the outcome. the truth matters lies have consequences over who years ago, a torren of lies swept dominion and election officials acros america into an alternativ universe of conspiracy theo
lies that they spread abou dominion and about january 6th and about the election i think, i m not saying they r not going to do it again, bu they will be a lot more carefu about it and the other thing that i think is clear is that there i an element - i think we should be satisfied that the truth won at the end of the day, they go penalized almost a billion dollars for lying. and that, to me, as we g forward we say, okay, at least there s a standard here wher people can tell the truth. and by the way, if we play u out this trial, lawrence mad this point in the last hour, which i thought was a good one which is that we would not hav learn that much more they should ve settled befor the depositions. all that we would ve had i people going on the stand an just repeating depositions, an we - it wouldn t have been televise or had audio so it just would have been a repeat of what we already know
of that to be in public view and on the public record first before this company settled. katie, i want to go bac that dollar amount, $787. million. for those who are saying, well that s less than half of the 1 6 they were asking for, can yo explain to our audience if the had gone to trial, if there wa a verdict, how it may have taken years and years afte appeals for dominion to get anybody, and now they re getting this cash asap yeah, you, know there has t be a gut check that always happens when you re dealin with this type of high stake litigation and i cannot begin to emphasize, when i try these types of cases, it ends up being a cost-benefi analysis i kind of joked when i was inside that courtroom, and jeremy can talk about it too the amount of billable hours that was going on in that on our, along the sheer number of lawyers that were on both side were going to be stupendous. i don t think people reall understood the amount of money that was at play here. so, assuming - that
what in the heck took so lon to actually get it across th finish line for a settlement but as often happens in trials when you re preparing for trial, you re always going to sit there and you re going to want to plan and kind of expect the unexpected but you re also going to say you know what, here are my potential achilles heels, he here is who i m definitely going to have some exposur should we go to trial. but it is until you literall see the whites of their eyes and that is dealing with the jurors themselves, that you re really not going to know wha you ve got going on. and that s what happened thi morning. they have this potential jur pool brought in. it was whittled down to certain number, and a pick 1 jurors and 12 alternates and then they finally had that jury sworn in. in my opinion, that s what you needed, you needed that jury and you also need that special master order from this morning we are in fox s going to be on the hook for a repeated, ver thorough investigation by spe
how did this play out in the courtroom? so, katie and i were both there and you could hear the gasps in the audience when the judge announced that there was the settlement it was someone that no one, think, anticipated, at least this close to trial. yes there were talks, ther were always these kinds of talks going on before trial. and lawyers very good lawyers wants to mak sure that they leave every option open. but no one expected settlement this big. 787 billion dollars, stephanie ruhle, is the biggest libe settlement that anyone, as far as the legal experts i hav been talking to, know they have ever seen. it s enormous. and yes, while there s n