a highly anticipated trial against fox corp foxa has been delayed for one day and is due to begin tuesday as per a new announcement by delaware judge eric m davis fox news the companys news broadcasting arm is facing a defamation lawsuit by dominion voting systems corp after the networks coverage of the 2020 presidential election consistently accused dominion of leveraging its voting technology to rig the election in favor of president joe biden against donald trump the background last week fox reached a settlement with majed khalil a venezuelan businessman who had separately filed a defamation case against the network for falsely accusing him of playing a key role in rigging the 2020 election former fox news host lou dobbs had accused khalil of orchestrating a nonexistent scheme to fix the election now dobbs is expected to testify in the dominion trial alongside key network figures including tucker carlson sean hannity bret baier and dana perino in its 16billion lawsuit dominion has also issued a subpoena requesting the testimony of 92 yearold billionaire magnate and fox chair rudolph murdoch as well as his son and fox ceo lachlan murdoch last month rudolph murdoch was quoted saying he didnt believe the 2020 election was rigged although no explanation was given for the trials oneday delay judge davis commented that such a postponement did not seem unusual and that its normal for highprofile trials to suffer small holdups fox vs dominion in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election several fox news anchors made repeated statements supporting unproven claims that the election was rigged through the use of electronic voting systems provided by dominion dominion filed a defamation lawsuit in 2021 saying that following fox’s defamatory statements dominion’s business suffered enormously an audit hired by dominion puts losses for the company north of 900 million due to losses in profits potential new businesses legal security and other expenses according to the company several employees were also subject to violent threats from supporters of the rigged election theory according to an npr report for its part fox lawyers have argued the case is about the first amendment protections of the medias absolute right to cover the news reported the ny times foxs defense is expecting the network’s broadcasts to be protected by first amendment law as commentary and news making the trial a landmark case in the history of americas free speech litigation fox was made to hand over thousands of emails and text messages between hosts producers and executives where the issue of a rigged election was raised to doubt by several key network figures in spite of reporting the opposite impact on fox shares late last month bofa securities downgraded fox from buy to neutral while reducing the price target from 42 to 34 analyst jessica reif ehrlich said that ​​the dominion lawsuit and associated headlines around the case should continue to be an overhang on shares we see increased risks for potential monetary damages andor their brand she wrote fox stock however hasnt been significantly impacted by the negative news of the trial so far shares are up 28 in the previous month and 17 in the last six months shares were up 09 at the time of this writing