A Delaware judge has ordered Fox Corp. to produce hundreds of documents sought by shareholders who allege the company’s board failed to properly oversee Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch after a series of costly scandals and lawsuits. Vice Chancellor Bonnie David ruled Friday in a long-running case filed by Fox shareholders. The plaintiffs are seeking to determine whether former Ford Motor Co. chief executive Jacques Nasser, a longtime Murdoch board member, was independent enough to challenge the family’s decisions. The records include roughly 700 documents containing the phrase “phone hacking,” dozens of board meeting records from Fox and related companies, and emails from Nasser’s Ford accounts. Fox must also provide a list of email addresses used by Nasser and Rupert Murdoch, along with years of Fox board minutes. The shareholders argue that evidence showing Nasser was closely aligned with the Murdochs could establish that more than half of Fox’s directors were not independent. If so, the case could proceed to trial. Nasser served on the boards of News Corp., 21st Century Fox and Fox Corp. for more than two decades. He was Fox’s lead independent director until leaving the board in 2023, the same year Fox agreed to pay nearly $800 million to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit. Dominion had accused Fox News of airing false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Fox has denied wrongdoing, and the settlement came without a public trial. Smartmatic USA has brought a separate defamation case against Fox seeking $2.7 billion. The shareholder case also examines Fox’s handling of a retracted story that falsely linked former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich to the release of party emails and suggested a political connection to his 2016 killing. Fox later reached an undisclosed settlement with Rich’s family. Other records concern the phone-hacking scandal involving Murdoch’s British tabloids. The fallout cost News Corp. about $1.5 billion, according to court filings, and helped lead to the separation of Fox’s U.S. television assets from News Corp. The Murdochs have since explored recombining the two sides of the business. Shareholders are particularly interested in Nasser’s decade on the board of British Sky Broadcasting, where court records indicate he backed James Murdoch as chief executive, supported the family during the hacking scandal and endorsed a stock buyback that increased the Murdoch family’s influence. The dispute also raises questions about preservation of evidence. Fox attorney Anitha Reddy told the court that Rupert Murdoch’s text messages were automatically deleted for a period ending around April 2022, after Dominion had sued Fox. Reddy said it was inaccurate to claim that all records had been destroyed and that Murdoch generally communicated by email, but acknowledged that texts were not retained during that period. The shareholders will also be allowed to review sealed records from the Smartmatic litigation concerning allegations that Murdoch deleted potentially relevant messages. Fox has accused executives at both Dominion and Smartmatic of failing to preserve evidence and has sought sanctions in those cases. Fox did not respond to a request for comment. The documents ordered released could offer a clearer picture of how Murdoch family members influenced board appointments and how corporate leaders responded to allegations that their media operations helped spread false or damaging claims. The outcome could also test the responsibility of corporate directors when concentrated family control overlaps with public-company governance.