Fox Corporation and its board were sued by New York City’s pension funds on Tuesday over claims that the parent company of Fox News neglected its duty to shareholders by broadcasting lies about the 2020 election, thus opening itself to defamation lawsuits.
“We are shareholders at a company that, unfortunately, has a longstanding practice of allowing conspiracy theories that its executives and its board know are false to be repeated over and over and over again, despite the very clear and present risk of defamation lawsuits eroding shareholder value,” New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who oversees the city’s five pension funds, said.
The funds currently hold nearly 900,000 shares of Fox Corp. stock, valued at over $28 million.
The state of Oregon, representing its own public retirement fund, also joined the lawsuit.
Fox News recently settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems which also accused the company of knowingly peddling election conspiracies to juice sagging ratings, forcing the company to pay a staggering $787.5 million on the day the trial started.
Fox also faces a similar billion-dollar lawsuit from voting software firm Smartmatic.
Ray Epps, who ex-Fox star Tucker Carlson baselessly accused of being an undercover federal agent at the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, is also suing Fox for defamation.
Fox founder Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, meanwhile, have already been sued by a Fox shareholder over claims they allowed the network to air election falsehoods.
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