Report: Nevada judge rules against Rupert Murdoch’s bid to alter family trust
A Northern Nevada judge has ruled against media titan Rupert Murdoch in his secretive legal battle to consolidate power against three of his children over the conservative-leaning family empire, according to a report from The New York Times.
Commissioner Edmund Gorman filed a decision Saturday concluding that Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, acted in “bad faith” by attempting to amend Rupert Murdoch’s irrevocable trust, The New York Times reported Monday, citing a sealed court document. After Rupert Murdoch’s death, the trust would currently divide control of the company among his four eldest children: Lachlan, the head of Fox News and News Corp., James, Elisabeth and Prudence.
Rupert Murdoch is the 93-year-old businessman behind media companies that control Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other outlets in Australia and Britain.
Six national media outlets — The New York Times, CNN, The Associated Press, National Public Radio, The Washington Post and Reuters — have been attempting to open proceedings to the public to access the case’s records from the Reno probate court where Murdoch filed the case, court records show.
That case is ongoing in front of the Nevada Supreme Court, where several documents have also been filed under seal, court records show.
Gorman previously ruled against the operator of Our Nevada Judges, Alexander Falconi, preventing him from videotaping proceedings in the probate case and ruling that electronic coverage would violate the parties’ “rights to privacy,” court records show.
Attorney Adam Streisand, who was identified by The New York Times as Rupert Murdoch’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Rupert Murdoch intends to appeal Gorman’s ruling preventing changes to the trust, The New York Times reported.
Attorneys listed in other court documents as the representatives for unnamed parties in the case also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nevada is one of the few states that allows for trust decanting, the process in which an irrevocable trust can be altered in court under special circumstances.
The New York Times has reported that if Mr. Murdoch fails to protect Lachlan’s leadership of the media empire, he will be unable to ensure Fox News remains a right-wing outlet after his death, since two of his other children are known to have less-conservative views than their father or brother. Rupert Murdoch has argued that maintaining the political bent of his media outlets and stripping voting power from three of his children is in the financial best interest of the trust’s beneficiaries.
Gorman’s decision did not find that James, Elisabeth and Prudence have “shared any singleness of purpose in changing the management of Fox News,” or other outlets, according to The New York Times.
The judge found that Rupert Murdoch and his eldest son operated in bad faith and undertook their plans in secret, The New York Times reported.
The judge also wrote that former Attorney General Bill Barr, a representative appointed to the trust, “demonstrated a dishonesty of purpose and motive” by assisting Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the newspaper reported.
The judge’s decision came after several days of in-person testimony in September in the Reno court, proceedings which were also sealed to the public.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.