WASHINGTON, Jan 25, Reuters -- Dominion Voting Systems Corp told a court that there is no realistic possibility that the voting machine maker will reach settlements in its billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyers who worked for former President Donald Trump.
After the 2020 presidential election, Dominion and another software firm, Smartmatic, brought a series of lawsuits against people who spread conspiracy theories related to their voting machines after Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Plaintiffs do not believe that a realistic settlement exists, despite the devastating harm to Plaintiffs, the lack of remorse shown by Defendants, and the fact that many of them continue to double down on their lies, according to a filing on Monday by Denver-based Dominion in federal court in Washington.
Lawyers for Powell and Giuliani said in the same filing that their clients may be open to settlement talks once the exchange of evidence is complete.
Powell and Giuliani have no to show remorse for and dispute that they have lied about anything, the defense lawyers said.
There's no special incentive to settle with Giuliani or Powell, and it's not just the sadistic glee of making their lives miserable by forcing this to continue, said Don Herzog, a University of Michigan law professor.
It's almost always that the party settling will stipulate in its terms of settlement. I don't admit that I did anything wrong. Unless they're nuts, what the corporation wants out of those two is the acknowledgment that you did something wrong. Herzog said that there's a pressing interest to go to trial and make them lose.
The former New York City mayor, Giuliani, was the lead campaign lawyer for Trump, who falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
In November 2020, Trump's campaign distanced itself from Powell after she appeared with Giuliani at a news conference and claimed without evidence that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to Biden.
In the following month, Powell visited Trump at the White House and urged him to seize voting machines and appoint her as a special counsel to investigate the election, according to the news website Axios.
Dominion has sued other pro-Trump media personalities and networks, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Newsmax, for billions of dollars in monetary damages. The defendants argued in court filings that they engaged in free speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.