Fox's legal filings have pushed back against Dominion's damage claims, arguing "that figure has no connection to Dominion's financial value as a company." A 2018 estimate by the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania put the privately held company's annual revenues at about $100 million.
Damages often 'can't be proven with mathematical precision'
If the jury finds Fox liable in the case, the jury can award compensatory damages for actual losses suffered by Dominion — including reputational harm and loss of value to the privately held company. (The jury could also award Dominion punitive damages to punish Fox for its behavior.)
Dominion will also have to show the comments were made with "actual malice." Under that standard, Dominion's attorneys will have to convince a jury that Fox either knowingly broadcast something false and damaging to the election tech firm's reputation, or willfully disregarded facts it should have known disproving those statements.
"You're talking about economic damages and economic disturbance, and so emotional feelings, hurt feelings, emotional damages, those kinds of things typically are not going to enter into the calculation," said Len Niehoff, a professor at the University of Michigan's law school.
A report commissioned by Dominion and filed with the court laid out about a billion dollars worth of damages the company says it has experienced. Dominion says it has lost $16 million in profits, more than $70 million in potential business, $14 million in legal, security and other expenses and more than $900 million in value due to the conspiracy theories tied to the 2020 election.
But Niehoff says making the case for monetary damages can be challenging because of the complexity in connecting the dots between a business loss and why the loss happened.
Breaking up with an election vendor isn't easy
In a sign that Shasta County might be an outlier, many other conservative jurisdictions around the country are sticking with Dominion, despite voter distrust.
In rural Fremont County, Colo., Justin Grantham recently renewed his country's contract with Dominion. Grantham is a Republican and leads the Colorado County Clerks Association. He said audits consistently show that the Dominion machines accurately count ballots, and the cost and training to switch just wouldn't be feasible.
"You're talking about learning how to use the system, learning how to program the ballots in the election, learning how to just figure out the tabulation and the software and the hardware," he said.
Grantham said training election judges and staff on new equipment would be another huge undertaking.
"You're talking massive training requirements for something that's used, oh gosh, once a year in the odd years and two to three times in the even years."
Grantham and other election professionals say the true impacts of the 2020 conspiracy theories on Dominion's business may not be known for years when current voting machine contracts come due, and if officials in conservative counties face political pressure to look elsewhere for their equipment.
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