LAW 486 - Defamation and Disinformation

In 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed billion-dollar defamation suits against Fox News and others based on their claims that Dominion rigged the 2020 Presidential Election. The case against Fox News settled in April 2023 for a record-breaking $787.5 million. In this short course, students will examine the life cycle of bet-the-company litigation, from pre-publication counseling to resolution. During each of the six sessions, instructors who served as litigation counsel on both sides of this historic litigation will analyze retraction demands, reputational harm in the age of disinformation, the First Amendment, and related privileges commonly raised by media defendants in libel litigation. This one-credit course will be pass/fail.