The bombshell $1.6 billion defamation trial of Fox News ended hours after it began as the cable news behemoth settled with Dominion Voting Systems Tuesday, just as opening arguments were set to begin.

The dramatic settlement spared Fox News’ 92-year-old founder, Rupert Murdoch, from taking the witness stand. Terms were not immediately disclosed. The deal in the Wilmington, Delaware, federal case came in the early afternoon, following the earlier selection of 12 jurors and a dozen alternates.

Fox News parent Fox Corp. and Dominion Voting Systems agreed to settle their closely watched legal battle, averting a trial on the voting-machine company’s allegations that it was defamed by network broadcasts after the 2020 presidential election.

A Delaware judge announced the settlement from the bench Tuesday afternoon without providing details.

The judge in the Fox News defamation case said on Tuesday that the case was resolved, abruptly ending a long-running dispute over misinformation in the 2020 election just as a highly anticipated trial was about to begin.

It was a last-minute end to a case that began two years ago and after the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that peeled back the curtain on a media company that has long resisted outside scrutiny. The settlement included a $787.5 million payment from Fox, according to Justin Nelson, a lawyer for Dominion.

Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. and its cable TV networks will go to trial in the coming days, but it remains to be seen what, exactly, the lawsuit means for Fox and its business.

Dominion brought its lawsuit against Fox and its TV networks, Fox News and Fox Business, in March 2021, arguing their hosts pushed false claims that Dominion’s voting machines were rigged in the 2020 presidential election that saw Joe Biden triumph over Donald Trump. The trial begins on Monday.

A Delaware judge on Tuesday lectured attorneys defending Fox News in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit after they revealed that Rupert Murdoch is not only the chairman at Fox Corp., but also a corporate officer at its subsidiary, Fox News.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said Fox lawyers previously had "represented to him more than once" that Murdoch was not an officer for the subsidiary cable network. Such information "could have" led him to make different rulings earlier on in the case, he said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have thought he was mocking those he has railed against when posing with a handmade snowflake. However, its hidden message showed that he was the subject of the joke.

In an image that has gone viral, the Republican seemed unaware of the word "fascist" that appeared in the framed gift handed to him at a GOP political rally in Davenport, Iowa. Steven Goffman of The Washington Post tweeted that the state's Republican Governor Kim Reynolds had also been given the gift.

Efforts to reform or, in the words of former President Donald J. Trump, “open up” defamation law are not new, though they tend to collide with the Supreme Court’s long-established precedent on the topic, which aims to protect robust public debate and enjoys support across the ideological spectrum.

Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to eliminate the First Amendment safeguards that prevent lawsuits seeking to strong-arm the press into silence.

Fox News host Howard Kurtz, who anchors a weekly show on the media industry, said he has been told not to cover the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems.

Kurtz revealed the prohibition during Sunday’s episode of “MediaBuzz” after he received criticism for not covering revelations about the network that came out of a recent filing by Dominion.

Fox News Channel host Howard Kurtz told viewers his network has forbidden him to discuss the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems—a story which has produced an avalanche of damaging stories about the network. “I believe I should be covering it,” he said Sunday. “It’s a major media story.”