A Delaware judge has just ordered Fox Corporation to hand over a mountain of internal records in a long-running shareholder lawsuit aimed at Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and other Fox directors. The files cover phone hacking, board minutes, emails, and the deletion of Rupert Murdoch’s text messages.
The order landed last week from Vice Chancellor Bonnie David. Fox fought to keep the material sealed. The judge sided with the plaintiffs across the board.
According to NPR, the haul includes roughly 700 documents that mention “phone hacking,” years of Fox board meeting minutes, emails from former Ford CEO and longtime Fox director Jacques Nasser’s Ford accounts, and a list of every email address ever used by Nasser or Rupert Murdoch.
Shareholders’ lawyers will also get sealed records from the still-pending Smartmatic case that deal with what the court calls Murdoch’s “spoliation” of records, legal speak for wiping texts.
The case was filed about three years ago by five New York City public-employee pension funds and Oregon’s public employee retirement system.
Those are Democrat-run, taxpayer-backed institutions using Delaware corporate law to try to pin Fox’s legal bills on the Murdochs personally.
The Associated Press reported earlier that the same funds accuse Murdoch and other Fox leaders of ignoring “red flags” after 2020.
