Lachlan Murdoch Drops Libel Suit Against Australian News Site

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch’s Australian lawyer, John Churchill, said Crikey had recently added to its defense case the thousands of pages of evidence that were made public in the recent lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company, brought against Fox in the United States.

“Mr. Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favor; however, he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits,” Mr. Churchill said.

Mr. Churchill said that in the Dominion case, which was settled on Tuesday for $787.5 million just as a trial was about to begin, the judge had ruled that the events of Jan. 6 were not relevant and that Dominion did not plan to argue that Fox had caused the insurrection.

“Yet this is what Crikey’s article alleged and what Crikey is attempting to argue in Australia,” Mr. Churchill said.

Will Hayward, the chief executive of Private Media, and Eric Beecher, the chairman, said in a statement that Mr. Murdoch’s dropping of the suit was “a substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/business/lachlan-murdoch-crikey-lawsuit.html