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Rupert Murdoch is not having the best year.
The 92-year-old has spent 2023 inundated with billion-dollar lawsuits and dealing with a messy engagement.
With his announcement that he's stepping down as chairman of Fox Corporation and News Corp, the media mogul is set to leave the outlets he built with some dents in his reputation.
Here's what Murdoch's last year as Fox and News Corp chairman looked like.
Dominion's day in court (that never happened)
One of the United States' most anticipated jury trials of 2023 was Dominion Voting System's defamation case against Fox News and Fox Corporation.
Dominion sued Fox for its coverage of the 2020 US presidential election.
Multiple Fox hosts allowed guests to spread outlandish conspiracy theories that the company's voting machines helped the Democrats "steal" the election from then-president Donald Trump.
Some hosts themselves spruiked the conspiracies that Dominion "deleted 2.7 million votes nationwide" or that associates of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez were behind the company.
Dominion originally tried to directly appeal to Fox to stop the claims being broadcast, but the conspiracy had taken root in the minds of many.
Dominion says its employees were harassed, enduring "stalking and death threats".
In the lead-up to the full jury trial, it became a real possibility that Murdoch and high-profile Fox stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would have to testify publicly.
When the first day of the trial arrived, the public gallery was packed but the judge and jury were nowhere to be seen.
After several hours of confusion, Judge Eric Davis excused the jury and announced the parties had resolved the case.
The settlement cost Fox $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion) and saved Murdoch from an extremely public grilling.
But it didn't save Fox from having to acknowledge that certain claims it made about Dominion were false.
"This settlement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards," it said.
"We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues."
Murdoch did not apologise personally, nor did he legally have to have to.
That's not all, folks
Fox and Murdoch's legal fallout from the 2020 election did not stop with the Dominion settlement.
The network is still facing a $US2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmetric USA.
Similar to Dominion's claim, Smartmetric says Fox harmed its business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 election in favour of Joe Biden.
Fox News has made several bids to have the lawsuit dismissed, which have been turned down by multiple judges.
The most recent update on the case from Smartmetric is from June 2023.It outlays a decision made by a New York court, where the case was filed, to deny Fox's request to dismiss the suit based on the "newsworthiness" defence.
The case does not yet have a trial date and it's unknown if Murdoch would be called to give evidence even after stepping down from Fox.
An upcoming royal trial
Murdoch's 2023 troubles haven't just been confined to the US.
In July this year, London's High Court gave Prince Harry's lawsuit against Murdoch-owned tabloids partial permission to go to trial.Harry, the youngest son of King Charles and the late Princess Diana, is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) over alleged invasions of privacy by its tabloids The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World from the mid-1990s until 2016.
It's all connected to the wildly publicised phone-hacking scandal that forced Murdoch to close down News of the World in 2011 amid a backlash.
Prince Harry casts the legal actions as a mission to hold tabloid executives to account for lying and covering up widescale wrongdoing.
His legal team have also said his elder brother Prince William, the heir to the throne, had settled a phone-hacking claim against NGN for a "huge sum".
The trial is set to go ahead next year but there's no confirmation that Murdoch will be directly involved.
Crikey! It's another lawsuit
While the elder Murdoch was battling Dominion in a US court, his son and now successor Lachlan picked a fight closer to home.
In the back half of 2022, Lachlan Murdoch brought a defamation case against Private Media, publisher of online news outlet Crikey.
Lachlan Murdoch sued over an article Crikey published in August 2022 that he claimed defamed him by referring to his family as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the US Capitol riots.
Crikey's editor-in-chief, Peter Fray, and Private Media denied the article was defamatory and claimed a new public interest defence for media.
Lachlan Murdoch gained some leverage early when a court heard that Crikey gained $1 million from new subscribers and donations after the lawsuit was launched.
But in April 2023 — days after the Dominion settlement — his lawyers announced they were dropping the case.
They said they no longer wished to allow Crikey to use the case to "facilitate a marketing campaign" to boost subscribers.
Private Media's chief executive Will Hayward said the move was "a victory for free speech".
The original article is still live on Crikey.
A divorce, an engagement and a reported split
While Rupert Murdoch's professional life took a hit in 2023, his personal life didn't fare much better.
The nonagenarian closed the book on his fourth marriage — to model and actor Jerry Hall — in August 2022.
Six months later, in March, Murdoch was in his own paper, The New York Post, touting his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a conservative radio host.The pair met at an event at his vineyard in California in September 2022.
"I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy," Murdoch told the New York Post.
The couple had plans to marry late in the northern hemisphere summer.
But one month into US autumn, there have been no nuptials.
Vanity Fair reported in April of this year — two weeks after news of the engagement broke — that the wedding was off.
One source told Vanity Fair that Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith's outspoken evangelical views.
ABC/Reuters/AP