Rupert Murdoch’s Courtroom Family Fight Will Make ‘Succession’ Look Boring

Who will gain control of Rupert Murdoch’s massive media empire?

In Nevada, a court case begins Tuesday that pits two wings of the Murdoch family up against each other in a battle that brings the intrigues and rivalries of Succession to very real life. The prize: control of media diamonds like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News.

Will Murdoch and his favored son Lachlan, 53, prevail, or will three other Murdoch children (James, 51; Elisabeth, 56; and Prudence, 66) wrest control from Rupert and Lachlan, and in so doing seek to change the fervently right-wing ideological zeal of Murdoch’s media properties—Fox News prime among them—forever?

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The first hearing in Murdoch Sr.’s quest to alter his family trust to give sole control over the family’s media empire to Lachlan is set for Tuesday afternoon, kicking off a two-week courtroom saga. Access to the hearing is prohibited. Knowing the case existed at all was limited to the Murdoch family’s various lawyers and a judge—until July, when The New York Times broke the news of the Succession-esque feud.

The court was crystal-clear on the only web page referencing the case, which provides an abbreviated docket: “No other public information related to this matter is available through the Court.”

Since then, various consortiums have sought to break open the case for public consumption. A group of media outlets—including the Times, CNN, The Washington Post, NPR, Reuters, and the Associated Press—filed a brief last week demanding press access to the hearing. A Nevada software engineer has pinned his watchdog nonprofit Our Nevada Judges onto the case, demanding it be televised in a state with some of the most restrictive laws regarding access to probate hearings.

“​​What is going on in this case is what has been going on in all of these cases in Nevada for as long as I know,” said Alex Falconi, 40, the founding director of Our Nevada Judges. “They will seal as much as they can just because they can.”

The 93-year-old mogul—whose family’s net worth amounts to $20.2 billion, according to Forbes—upended his family trust late last year when he sought to amend it and give full control to his son Lachlan, arguing only he could maintain his media empire’s commercial value, according to The New York Times.

The brazen attempt to undermine the three other children party to the trust—James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—roiled them. The trio banded together to try and end their father’s subterfuge, arguing Murdoch’s attempt was a bad-faith quest that undermines the spirit of the trust’s “equal governance provision,” according to the Times.

(All six of Murdoch’s children have equal equity stakes in the trust, but only the four in dispute—and their father— have voting rights, according to the Times. Once Murdoch dies, the four oldest children would each get a single vote.)

The trust came into place after Murdoch’s divorce from his second wife, Anna Murdoch Mann. As part of the settlement, and acquiescing to Mann’s demand, Murdoch granted equal voting rights to the four children and cemented it as part of an irrevocable trust.

In the decades since, Murdoch has telegraphed his desire for Lachlan—who oversees the parent companies of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post—to succeed him. Lachlan’s appointment to the top of Fox Corp. in 2019 following Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox was widely seen as an opportunity for the eldest son’s ascension to the top of the empire, and Murdoch stepped down as chairman of News Corp. last year in favor of Lachlan.

The Fox Corp. appointment came a year before James Murdoch, the liberal-leaning Murdoch child who endorsed Kamala Harris last week, criticized his family’s editorial decisions before he resigned from the board of News Corp. over its right-wing tilt. “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” he wrote in his July 2020 resignation letter.

Murdoch’s argument is that the three children would disrupt the leadership of his TV stations and publications, thereby preventing them from making money and squandering their own personal profits. That, his attorneys argued, allow him to change the terms of the trust.

It’s not hard to understand why Murdoch would want the case shrouded in secrecy, as his moves have already gotten personal. According to the Times, Murdoch’s representatives have referred to James as the “troublesome beneficiary.” An open court hearing could potentially allow for other Murdoch family secrets to be exposed for public consumption.

It also would prevent the public from hearing from the media mogul himself. According to Puck, Murdoch plans to testify as to why he believes he can amend the trust and strip control away from three of his children.

His eagerness to testify is likely a strategic attempt to explain his intent behind the trust’s language, Nevada attorney Caren Jenkins told the Daily Beast, as these matters are typically handled and resolved by lawyers who appear before the judge.

“It’s not unusual to bring the person who wrote it in to provide testimony about what that writing was intended to mean if there’s an ambiguity,” said Jenkins, who specializes in probate law and family trusts. “The best interest of the beneficiaries is pretty ambiguous to me.”

That would extend to whether any of the Murdoch children appear themselves, Jenkins said. “If his credibility is undermined, his veracity as a witness is undermined by their testimony, then perhaps their counsel would have one or all of them testify,” Jenkins said.

Murdoch’s family feud is one of two battles over control of his media empire. Starboard Value, a hedge fund managed by activist Jeffrey C. Smith, submitted a nonbonding shareholder proposal to the News Corp board protesting Murdoch’s plan to pass down his controlling stake in the company, according to Reuters.

Murdoch has a dual-class stock structure, which gives him a 40 percent voting share despite an economic stake of 14 percent. Starboard wants that structure nixed entirely. “There are no reasonable arguments to extend super-voting rights and de facto control to the inheritors of a founder,” Smith wrote in the letter, according to The New York Times.

Smith noted the political squabbles between the Murdoch family, arguing they “could be paralyzing to the strategic direction” of News Corp. He also wonders why the views of the kids, none of which are involved in the company other than Lachlan, “should carry greater weight than the views of other shareholders.” Because the proposal is non-binding, News Corp.’s board does not have to act on it. Still, the dispute indicates Murdoch faces both professional and personal challenges to the management of the family trust.

As to what the public will or will not know when it comes to the Murdoch family saga, media outlets argued to Nevada’s Second Judicial District Court last week that the complete secrecy of the case prevented outlets from holding it accountable to Nevada law.

“Nevada’s courts are accountable to the public, and the public is entitled to know whether the trust at issue is being administered in accordance with the law,” the filing stated, according to CNN. “Certainly, an entire matter cannot be sealed such that its very existence is not a public record, even if all parties to the litigation agree. Rather, the court must apply the presumption of access and make specific findings to underpin any sealing.”

Falconi believes the same—and, he says, his past success prove he’s right. Falconi convinced the Nevada Supreme Court in February that a local law that automatically closed proceedings in family court cases violated the First Amendment. He’s also successfully sued to get cameras in courtrooms, offering some sunshine to the legally secretive state.

“If people want to close the proceedings, or if they want to seal or redact certain documents, that they should have to follow through the same procedures that anyone would have to follow in any civil case: the ordinary procedure to seal and redact documents and close the court,” Falconi said. “These statutes that just automatically close the court and seal stuff—I don't think it makes any sense.”

The decision to grant media access could come at any moment, signifying whether media outlets—and Murdoch competitors—would get a full glimpse of whether Murdoch will ostracize three of his children from deciding his international, influential empire’s future.

To Jenkins, however, whether anyone gets access at all is irrelevant. “It’s none of our business,” she said.

“A private individual has accumulated wealth in this lifetime, and he should be able to do with it whatever it is that he decides to do,” Jenkins said.