Pro-Trump television network Newsmax and voting technology company Smartmatic settled a major defamation lawsuit Thursday in a last-minute deal, avoiding a high-stakes trial over the spread of false election claims by 2020.
The terms of the settlement were not immediately known. The agreement comes hours after jury selection began in a Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom ahead of opening statements scheduled for Monday. The parties and a court official announced the settlement Thursday afternoon.
“Newsmax is pleased to announce that it has resolved litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” the network said in a statement.
Smartmatic’s attorney, Erik Connolly, said in a statement that the company was “very pleased to have finalized” the Newsmax case.
“There are consequences for lying to the American people,” Connolly said. “Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”
The closely watched trial would have been the first in a series of high-profile lawsuits filed against right-wing media companies in the wake of the 2020 election to reach a jury — and was to determine whether Newsmax defamed Smartmatic by broadcasting false statements about the company’s machines. had rigged the results against Donald Trump.
Newsmax has denied any wrongdoing and said its coverage is protected by the First Amendment.
After previous negotiations failed, settlement talks intensified on Thursday morning. While jury selection was underway, members of both sides’ legal teams were notably not present in the courtroom as they hammered out a deal in private, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
A loss at trial could have forced Newsmax to pay tens of millions of dollars to Smartmatic, putting the small cable channel in financial jeopardy.
“This is a matter that is your company’s responsibility for Newsmax,” Howard Cooper, the network’s attorney, said at a recent pretrial hearing.
But as the trial approaches, Smartmatic’s position has weakened significantly, further increasing the possibility of a settlement.
Smartmatic claimed that lies promoted by Newsmax, Fox News and other Trump allies destroyed its reputation and cost the company billions of dollars. However, as the Newsmax trial approaches, Smartmatic’s lawyers have reduced the company’s damages request to about $370 million, reducing their demands by about $1 billion, according to statements from both parts.
The decline was driven in part by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who ruled Monday that Smartmatic could only seek compensation for provable losses, eliminating the possibility of additional “punitive damages” that could resulting in an award of staggering damages.
Smartmatic also voluntarily abandoned its efforts to seek damages for potential losses after 2023 because it would open the door to potentially devastating testimony about its executives indicted this year in an unrelated corruption scheme in the Philippines. (Smartmatic denies criminality.)
“Settlements are a common outcome in civil trials, especially as the trial is about to begin,” said Eric Robinson, a media law expert who teaches at the University of South Carolina. “This also applies to defamation cases like this. It often makes more sense to settle rather than pay the costs of a trial and possible appeals.
This settlement is the latest in a series of 2020 election defamation cases to reach an out-of-court agreement before trial. Fox News struck a deal with Dominion Voting Systems last year for a record $787 million, and far-right channel One America News struck a deal with Smartmatic earlier this year.
Newsmax still faces a separate defamation lawsuit over similar claims filed by Dominion. Newsmax denies any wrongdoing in this matter.
But perhaps the biggest lawsuit still hanging over a media outlet for its repeated dissemination of 2020 election lies is Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, scheduled for trial next year.
“We now look forward to our day of hearing against Fox and Fox News for their disinformation campaign,” Connolly, Smartmatic’s attorney, said in his statement Thursday.
Fox News denies any wrongdoing. A spokesperson for the network called Smartmatic’s lawsuit “unsupported by the facts and intended to cripple First Amendment freedoms.”
