A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A victory at trial, whether the damages were higher or lower than the settlement, would likely have been appealed

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A victory at trial, whether the damages were higher or lower than the settlement, would likely have been appealed & fought tool and nail by Fox to reduce the settlement amount. And even then there wouldn't be an admissions of guilt or anything like that-- it would have been spun as just more judicial activism as Fox maintained their innocence. There would never be an apology, never a public victory that Fox News viewers saw and acknowledged as a huge blunder by Fox. This way still still sucks, but maybe some very few will see it as a tacit admission of Dominion's case again against Fox, after all why settle if you're innocent? Though I have my doubts. People are not easily shaken from beliefs held mostly out of ideological alignment.