
Inset: Zachary Young. Main: A court exhibit highlights the chyron from the Nov. 11, 2021, CNN segment at issue (court documents).
CNN‘s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery must conduct a financial deep dive and then hand relevant information over to a Navy veteran who is suing the network in a high-profile, and potentially high-dollar, defamation case, a judge in Delaware ruled on Friday.
In the event the requested documents do not exist, however, the company must issue a “sworn declaration” to that effect, Delaware Superior Court Judge Lynne M. Parker ruled, Fox News reports.
The ruling may come as something of a double-edged victory for Zachary Young, who is suing CNN over a 2021 segment that aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” In the lawsuit, Young claims the cable news channel falsely painted him as an “illegal profiteer” exploiting “desperate Afghans” with “exorbitant” extraction fees amid the fallout of President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Young and his attorneys have been trying to get their hands on certain financial documents they claim are relevant to the case for some time but complain that CNN has not been forthcoming with such discovery.