Rupert Murdoch came to the United States as an alien with a fortune. And a will.
Unlike most aliens who enter the United States, much is unknown about him. We know a lot about aliens at the Southern Border, for example. But I do not recall reading any stories about their wills, if it comes to that. If they had a will.
In his own will, which he apparently filed in the Probate Court in Reno, Nevada, Mr. Murdoch provided so far as we can tell that (most of) his children would participate equally in the running of his businesses upon his death. Those businesses include Fox.
Mr. Murdoch has now filed another lawsuit in the Nevada Courts. He is now asking a Nevada judge for an order that he can change his will. Murdoch has changed his mind and wants his will, apparently, to reflect his change of mind. He wants one of his children only, to have control of Fox.
The Nevada Courts have kept Mr. Murdoch’s lawsuit under wraps. That’s why I have written that “so far as we can tell” Murdoch’s will as he originally wrote it provides for (most of) his children to run his businesses equally upon his death, and that “apparently” he has now changed his mind and wants to change his will so that only one of his children will run Fox when he, Rupert Murdoch, dies.
In an Emergency Petition asking the Nevada Supreme Court to stop Mr. Murdoch’s lawsuit until it can be opened up to the public, the New York Times, Cable News Network (CNN), the Associated Press, National Public Radio, Reuters and ABC, among others, have described the Murdoch lawsuit so that the Supreme Court of Nevada can understand why the petitioners are asking that Mr. Murdoch’s secret lawsuit in a public court be made more available to the public who are funding it with their taxes.
The facts that follow are taken from the Petition pending in the Nevada Supreme Court. To begin with, the lawyer signing the Petition wrote that the docket of Murdoch’s lawsuit is sealed. The docket is the list of all the parties, their lawyers, and their physical and EMail addresses and telephone numbers. Every case has a docket, obviously.
Except Murdoch’s.
The parties are not identified by name. All the parties are called “Doe” and they all have numbers instead of names. No-one knows how many “Does” there are. This is not the way that cases are usually run. At least in my experience in America. I have not seen this before.
The petitioners’ lawyer was able to get a few pleadings from some of the parties, so she searched out the lawyers she thought she could identify, their mailing addresses and their EMail addresses using “Google search to determine them to the best of my ability. I have asked the [Nevada] district court for a service list but have not been provided with one.” This too is unusual. In the extreme.
Pleadings filed with the Court in a lawsuit are required by every jurisdiction in America to be shared with the lawyers who represent anyone else that is a party in the litigation. Every lawsuit has a service list for that reason. In the Murdoch secret case, the service list if any was not available. It still isn’t available.
It is worth remarking here that the list of lawyers who were sent the Emergency Petition to honor the presumption of public access to public Courts includes some of the most prestigious law firms from across the country: Cravath, Swaine & Moore of Manhattan; Sheppard Mullin of Los Angeles; Greenberg Traurig of Las Vegas, among others including lawyers in Reno and in Washington, D.C.
So, the lawyer served all the lawyers she could find by sharing a copy of this Emergency Petition in an unusual step that is not required of mere mortals: She served it by EMail to all of the EMail addresses she could find that looked like they were the EMail addresses of every single lawyer in the Murdoch matter: By my count, this came to a total of some 4 Dozen lawyers or, to use her count, 44 lawyers.
She also sent the Emergency Petition to the Nevada judge and the Nevada Probate Commissioner in the trial court that sealed the Murdoch lawsuit, so that they too have been given copies.
Parenthetically, no-one is going to be able to say that the Emergency Petition was hidden. It is not hidden from you, either. Here is a link so that you can read it for yourself. (I converted the Emergency Petition from a pdf to a word.docx, so there may be some glitches or "hieroglyphics" in it. Sorry about that.) Download New York Times Co. v. Second Jud. Dist. Emergency Petition Doc. No. 24-34562 filed Sept. 19 2024 (Nev. Docket 89347)
Even the sealing orders have been sealed.
It is not the legal burden of the petitioners who are asking for access to establish the right of the public to access a lawsuit. It was the burden of Murdoch to prove why his lawsuit is sealed.
If the public does not know what was sealed, and if the public does not know why things were sealed, then the public has no way to know what evidence or reasons Murdoch gave the Nevada Court to seal his lawsuit.
This has happened in the United States in 2024. And it is still happening. In a 4-3 ruling on September 20, 2024, the day after the Emergency Petition was filed, a majority of the Nevada Supreme Court refused to stop the secrecy while they considered the Emergency Petition. That means of course that the secrecy continued, even as Mr. Murdoch’s secret lawsuit is coming or already came to an end.
It looks like we may have to wait for Fox to report the “fair and balanced” results of the Murdoch matter in Reno.
Or if Mr. Murdoch and the Courts in Nevada have their way, we may never know.
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