A federal judge on Friday dismissed pro-Trump channel Newsmax’s lawsuit against Fox News just two days after it was filed, calling it a “shotgun” complaint.
Newsmax’s lawsuit is a “shotgun pleading,” US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled, using a term for disorganized complaints that fail to meet certain pleading standards. The lawsuit repeats its allegations in each legal claim, thus rendering it “impermissible” in court, the judge said.
“The Court has an independent obligation to dismiss such pleadings and require repleader,” wrote Cannon, a Donald Trump-appointed district judge in Florida who, in 2024, dismissed the classified documents case against him.
Newsmax has six days to file a cleaned-up complaint. In a text to CNN, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy called the judge’s dismissal “a technical issue with the filing” and said the network’s attorneys will refile.
Nevertheless, the ruling presents a hurdle to Newsmax’s antitrust lawsuit against Fox News, which accuses the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable outlet of illegally blocking competition in the right-wing pay-TV market.
In its complaint, Newsmax alleged that Fox News uses its immense powers to “coerce distributors into not carrying or into marginalizing other right-leaning news channels, including Newsmax.”
But Newsmax does have relatively wide distribution. In its most recent quarterly report, the network boasted of reaching 26 million quarterly viewers and more than 60 million US homes and 100-plus countries.
The network, however, has struggled to convert that available audience into loyal viewers.
Fox News has been the dominant player in conservative cable news since its inception in 1996. In the second quarter of this year, Fox News averaged 1.48 million total viewers at any given time, with 170,000 of those viewers in the key advertising demographic of ages 25-54.
By comparison, Newsmax averaged 141,000 total viewers and just 14,000 in the key demo. And Newsmax’s total viewership in the quarter declined year-over-year from 2024, while Fox News’ increased. Fox News routinely ranks as the No. 1 channel on all cable, and sometimes beats the broadcast networks in some ratings categories.
Fox News ridiculed the lawsuit in a statement on Wednesday, saying Newsmax “cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines.” The network did not comment on Friday, but simply pointed to the ruling.
