Secret Murdoch succession fight to remain sealed after judge rejects media petition for access

By CNN Newsource

Published September 13, 2024 4:55 AM

By Hadas Gold, CNN

New York (CNN) — A Nevada judge has ruled that billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his family can hold a secret court battle over the future of his vast media empire behind closed doors.

The judge rejected a petition by a coalition of media organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, Reuters and ABC, to unseal the case and allow access.

Though the Murdoch family is fighting over the trust and who will ultimately have control of the family businesses after the 93-year-old’s death, all of those involved agreed to sealing the case.

Nevada offers one of the most private court settings for issues like family trust decisions, allowing parties and judges to lock the cases behind closed doors to such an extreme degree that their very existence is not even publicized on court dockets. The existence of the case remained under wraps until The New York Times first reported on it in July. In a now-public docket, the case is only identified as “The Matter of the Doe 1 Trust, PR23-00813“.

Attorneys for the family members said in court filings that the case should remain sealed because it would otherwise reveal confidential information related to Murdoch’s business, which includes companies like the right-wing cable outlet Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, and could jeopardize Murdoch’s physical safety.

The judge agreed, writing, “A family trust like the one at issue in this case, even when it is a stockholder in publicly traded companies, is essentially a private legal arrangement, as the applicable sealing statues recognize.”

The judge said that documents related to the petition to open up the case could be made public, and that the public has a right to know who the judge and attorneys are in the case. But beyond that, everything in this case that it scheduled to begin next week with the Murdoch family likely in attendance, will remain sealed.

Preston Padden, who worked closely with Rupert Murdoch to build Fox Broadcasting in the 1990s, blasted the family’s secrecy in the case.

“It is beyond ironic that the Murdochs, who print the dirty laundry of every other family in the world on the front pages of their tabloids, are blocking the media from gaining access to the Murdoch Family Trust Court proceeding that will impact the public by determining the control of the WSJ , Fox News, etc.,” he told CNN.

Padden is now actively lobbying government officials to strip one of Fox’s broadcast station licenses.

CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed reporting.