AP Photo/Ben Gray
- Dominion projects it will lose $600 million over the next 8 years due to election disinformation.
- The company laid out the extent of the economic damage in a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.
- Dominion has also sued attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and MyPilow CEO Mike Lindell.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems say that the company is now projected to lose over $600 million in profits due to the extent of misinformation and disinformation about its voting equipment in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
On Friday, Dominion sued Fox News for defamation over statements made on-air both by hosts and guests spreading false and damaging claims that Dominion machines were unsecured and even rigged, and used to steal the election from President Donald Trump. The company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.
Dominion, which was founded in Canada but now based in the United States, provides equipment like ballot marking devices and ballot scanners to states and localities across the US, including in the state of Georgia.
"Based on Dominion's historic financial track record, contract pipeline, retention and renewal rates, and new business capture rates, as well as the nature, severity, pervasiveness, and permanence of the viral disinformation campaign, updated current projections show lost profits of over $600 million over the next eight years," the complaint said.
As the voting company's lawyers explained in the complaint, the election technology market is difficult to break into and very competitive to succeed in. There are only a handful of major election vendors in the US, and big contracts for election equipment don't come up very often.
"Dominion's contracts and prospects have come under increased pressure in a number of significant markets," Stephen Shackelford, partner at Susman Godfrey and one of Dominion's attorneys on the case against Fox News, told Insider in a Friday press conference.
"We obviously hope that filing this lawsuit and proving our case can help with that, but it is an enormous uphill battle, and we're not going to be able to get all the way there, and we know that, and that's why Fox is on the hook for the massive economic damages they've done to Dominion," he added.
Dominion's lawyers said that the totality of the disinformation has "irreparably damaged" the company and "destroyed the enterprise value of a business that was worth potentially more than $1 billion ... before the viral disinformation campaign."
Dominion's latest legal action follows similar defamation lawsuits against GOP attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, all of which are seeking over $1 billion in damages.
All three guests have appeared on Fox News, which has nationwide reach, to repeat the baseless claims of election fraud and spread false information about the integrity of Dominion machines. In particular, the complaint pointed to segments anchored by host Maria Bartiromo, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, many of which featured Powell, Giuliani, and Lindell.
The false claims made on air include allegations about Dominion machines "flipping" votes, and baseless conspiracy theories that Dominion voting equipment was developed in part to help the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez rig elections, the complaint said.
The complaint called the baseless claims "ludicrous, inherently improbable, and technologically impossible," and accused the network of knowingly and "recklessly" allowed allegations they knew were false to spread on air.
"FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court," a Fox spokesperson told Insider in response to the suit.