Fox News crossed a big, potentially embarrassing showdown with Dominion Voting Systems off its list of legal troubles this week with a $787.5 million pretrial settlement, but the conservative network faces more court challenges ahead.

Most notably, a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic USA, which largely echoes Dominion’s claims that it was irreparably harmed by lies spread on the network during coverage of the 2020 presidential election.

The most anticipated media trial of recent years was averted at the last minute Tuesday, when Dominion Voting Systems settled the defamation case it had brought against Fox News.

Dominion had been seeking $1.6 billion in damages. The company argued that its business had been badly hurt by conspiracy theories around the 2020 election — theories that, Dominion contended, had been advanced on Fox shows even though key people at the network knew them to be false.

The voting technology company and Fox ultimately settled on Tuesday, for $787.5 million.

The wailing you heard across the land Tuesday afternoon was the sound of thousands of journalists lamenting the settlement of the defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. An entire industry of reporters has been denied the schadenfreude of seeing their hated political and media competitor in the dock. An hilariously revealing courtroom account in Politico laments that “hopes were dashed—dreams torpedoed” by the settlement.

A last-minute $787.5m (£634m) deal allowed Fox News to avoid a lengthy and potentially embarrassing defamation trial with US voting machine company Dominion.

In its $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion alleged that Fox had damaged its business by spreading false claims that its machines had helped rig the 2020 election in Joe Biden's favour.

Following Tuesday’s stunning last-minute decision by Fox News to wave the white flag and settle with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million rather than go through a grueling six-week defamation trial, much of the focus has centered on how this will impact the conservative cable giant going forward.

While Dominion is now in the rearview mirror for Fox, the voting machine firm still has pending lawsuits against fringe-right cable networks Newsmax and One America News, as well as Trump acolytes Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.

Dominion Voting, America’s unexpected fighter for its fledgling democracy, settled its $1.6 billion lawsuit with Fox and decided to step out of the ring with a bag of money instead of vanquishing one of the country’s most destructive and influential peddlers of hate and disinformation.

Fox Corp. and its cable networks agreed Tuesday to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over false claims that Dominion’s machines swayed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

The settlement, which came after a 12-member jury had been seated in the case in Delaware Superior Court, averted a weekslong trial that could have seen top Fox TV hosts and network boss Rupert Murdoch publicly testify.

When the Dominion voting machine company settled its defamation suit this afternoon against Fox News, the whole country benefited by avoiding a bad precedent on First Amendment press freedoms.

A bad precedent could have been set if the case had reached a verdict for either side. Without a settlement, there was almost no possible outcome that would have avoided great mischief down the line.

Fox News has settled a defamation lawsuit from the voting machine company, Dominion, over its reporting of the 2020 presidential election.

In a last-minute settlement before trial, the network agreed to pay $787.5m (£634m) - about half of the $1.6bn initially sought by Dominion.

Dominion argued its business was harmed by Fox spreading false claims the vote had been rigged against Donald Trump.

The deal spares Fox executives such as Rupert Murdoch from having to testify.

The judge in the case is not required to give his approval for the agreement.