MAGA news channel Newsmax’s monopoly lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was thrown out by a judge on Friday on a technicality.
Florida Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the complaint, filed Wednesday, as a “shotgun pleading” because four of the five counts included allegations from previous counts. The conservative outlet, owned by Christopher Ruddy, has accused Fox News of carrying out “an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for US right-leaning pay TV news.”
Newsmax has until Sept. 11 to refile the lawsuit, but if the amended complaint still contains duplicate allegations, it “may result in dismissal of the case without further notice,” the judge wrote.
“We understand this is just a technical matter and our law firm is refiling,” Newsmax said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
Cannon received praise from President Donald Trump after she controversially tossed out the classified documents case against the president in July 2024 on the grounds that Attorney General Merrick Garland unconstitutionally appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate the president.
Speaking at the Republican National Convention, Trump called her a “highly respected federal judge.”
Newsmax’s suit, filed in federal court in Florida, argues that Fox has been able to keep its control over the market by using its popularity to “coerce distributors into not carrying or into marginalizing other right-leaning news channels,” such as Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN). OANN is not a plaintiff.
Fox News also imposes monetary penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax, such as paying high fees for Fox channels like Fox Business, according to the original filing.
“Fox has deliberately blocked Newsmax’s growth in critical distribution platforms such as Hulu, Sling, Fubo, and other major platforms,” Newsmax said in a statement Wednesday.
However, Fox has called the Wednesday filing an attempt to make up for Newsmax’s “competitive failures.”
“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” a Fox spokeswoman said in a statement to Daily Beast.
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