A federal appeals court Friday revived a lawsuit brought by murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich’s parents against Fox News, which the family alleges intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon them by spreading conspiracy theories about their son.
A district court judge for the Southern District of New York dismissed the Rich family’s complaint in August 2018, but lawyers for the Riches appealed the case to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and judges overturned the lower court’s decision in a 28-page ruling today. The case will now be allowed to move forward toward discovery.
Fox News employees and others allegedly “orchestrated a plan to turn the Riches into unwitting collaborators in their scheme,” the appeals court decision noted on Thursday, and “allegedly, Fox News was aware of the scheme all along.”
“They did this, it is claimed, with full knowledge of the harm it would do to Seth’s parents,” U.S. Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi wrote in vacating the dismissal and sending the case back to the lower court.
“We have no trouble concluding that — taking their allegations as true — the Riches plausibly alleged what amounted to a campaign of emotional torture,” Calabresi wrote.
“The court’s ruling today permits Mr. and Mrs. Rich to proceed with discovery to determine whether there is a factual basis for their claims against FOX News,” a Fox News spokesperson said to the Washington Examiner. “And while we extend the Rich family our deepest condolences for their loss, we believe that discovery will demonstrate that FOX News did not engage in conduct that will support the Riches’ claims. We will be evaluating our next legal steps.”
Seth Rich was murdered the morning of July 10, 2016, in what authorities say was a botched robbery. Conspiracy theorists seized upon Rich’s murder and spread the baseless rumor that he was the source of the stolen DNC emails obtained by Wikileaks and that his death was a politically motivated hit job. Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who is now facing extradition to the United States for a host of charges, helped promote the conspiracy theory. The government concluded, however, that the DNC emails were stolen by Russian military intelligence, and there’s no credible evidence pointing to Rich’s involvement.
Rich’s parents, Joel and Mary, filed their lawsuit against Fox News in the Southern District of New York in March 2018, alleging employees of Fox News swept them up in a deceitful scheme to promote the conspiracy theory, and that Fox News let it happen. The lawsuit alleged Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman and Fox News guest Ed Butowsky “induced” Rich’s parents to hire investigator Rod Wheeler to help “solve” their son’s murder, and that the three colluded “to pursue and develop a fiction” that painted Rich as the DNC leaker and as “a criminal and a traitor.”
“Joel and Mary Rich, grieving parents of a murdered child, seek justice for having become collateral damage in a political war to which they are innocent bystanders,” Rich’s lawyers told the court last year. “They seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder.”
Fox News responded in May 2018 with a motion to dismiss the case by saying the Rich family’s claims “have no precedent in the common law and are incompatible with the First Amendment right of the press to report on matters of legitimate public concern.”
“[Joel and Mary Rich] allege that the source of their emotional distress is the publication of false and defamatory news stories about their son,” attorneys for Fox News said in court filings. “But it is the law of New York and elsewhere that surviving family members have no cause of action for the libel of a deceased relative, no matter how much emotional distress they may have suffered.”
Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York sided with Fox News in August 2018 and dismissed the case.
“It is understandable that Plaintiffs might feel that their grief and personal loss were taken advantage of, and that the tragic death of their son was exploited for political purposes,” Daniels ruled. “However, a general allegation that defendants had an ‘agreement to collaborate against’ plaintiffs cannot form the basis for an [intentional infliction of emotional distress] claim.”
The federal appeals court disagreed.
Calabresi noted Fox News published an article in 2017 titled Slain DNC Staffer Had Contact with WikiLeaks Say Multiple Sources which promoted baseless claims that Seth Rich was involved in stealing the DNC emails. Fox News later retracted the piece.
“Fox News guests, however, continued to reference the retracted article for months,” Calebresi said today. “And to this day, Fox News makes available online at least two videos repeating, almost verbatim, the content of the Zimmerman story.”
Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity heavily promoted the conspiracy theory, and a seven-minute segment between Wheeler and Hannity from May 2017 is still on the Fox News website. The interview took place after the Rich family repeatedly disavowed the conspiracy theory and Wheeler.
“We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth’s murderers,” the Rich family said.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani showed an openness to the conspiracy theory in August.
