The $1.6 billion defamation case Dominion Voting Systems brought against Newsmax following the 2020 presidential election is set to go on trial in late September 2024, a judge ruled, according to a CNN report published Monday.
The voting technology company sued the right-wing network in August 2021, alleging Newsmax deliberately made knowingly false statements regarding the 2020 presidential race and Dominion’s voting machines to boost its ratings and profits. On the same day, Dominion filed two additional defamation lawsuits — against One America News Network and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.
It takes nearly a full election cycle to just get to trial?
Yeah. Courts are often slow movers, especially in civil trials where many of the evidence sources are detailed and paper heavy. The two sides spend a long time slowly sending documents back and forth during discovery. Very tedious, slow, and technical arguments get made. Eventually they get to the actual case, but years of groundwork are done before that.
I would argue this level of delay is a miscarriage of justice. Actions this malicious could easily put companies out of business full years before a trial would even start. Where is a fair distinction between “slow/thorough” and “delay until the problem goes away”. There’s a non-zero chance some of the perpetrators will literally die before ever facing justice. How is that fair to the plaintiff?
It’s not always fair. Justice delayed is justice denied.
It’s a continual problem where one of the sides delays or packs the course docket with lots of filings just to burn time and money. It works to empty the coffers of the other side and as you said, even on of the litigants could die of old age before the case comes to trial.
I was mostly speaking to how civil cases, especially financial ones are inherently complex, so there’s often a lot of details that slow things down. The US justice system really does need tort reform and process reforms, along with more funding to court support staff so everything can be processed faster. It’s one way large corporations keep their power: by convincing politicians to keep underfunding courts, which post people don’t care about until they need to be in court, so it can fly under the radar as a political issue.