Days after Fox News settled its defamation lawsuit suit with Dominion Voting Systems in the US, Lachlan Murdoch has dropped his defamation case against Private Media, the publisher of Crikey.
The trial between Lachlan Murdoch and Private Media was scheduled to be held in October.
According to The Guardian, Murdoch’s lawyer John Churchill said:
“It is a matter of public record that Crikey admits that there is no truth to the imputations that were made about Mr Murdoch in the article.
“In their latest attempt to change their defence strategy, Crikey has tried to introduce thousands of pages of documents from a defamation case in another jurisdiction, which has now settled.
“In that case, in the US state of Delaware, the trial judge ruled the events of January 6, 2021, in the US Capitol, were not relevant. Further, the plaintiff Dominion Voting Systems made clear it would not argue that Fox News caused the events of January 6, and at no point did it ever argue that Mr Murdoch was personally responsible for the events of January 6. Yet this is what Crikey’s article alleged and what Crikey is attempting to argue in Australia.
“Mr Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favour, 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.”
Murdoch was originally suing politics editor Bernard Keane alongside former editor-in-chief Peter Fray over an opinion piece Crikey published last year linking the Murdoch family to the January 6th attacks on the US Capitol.
The Crikey opinion piece in question, titled Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator, was initially taken down on June 29 of last year, but was restored on August 15.
In February a court ruled that Murdoch could expand his defamation claim to include Eric Beecher, chairman, publisher and co-founder of Private Media, and Will Hayward, CEO of Private Media.