Let's say two employees for a toy company talk about a company's product being dangerously unsafe (regardless if was true or not) on a news channel. The same toy company goes on later on to file a defamation lawsuit and the following happens:
- The witnesses made it clear they would not back down from the lawsuit and would challenge it.
- The news channel does not want to get involved and would retract any articles, but the company made it clear they would sue them anyway.
If they are written in the same lawsuit (BT Baby Toys vs Alex A, Bobby B and XYZ News), are they sued separately or all together? Can the news organization bail out of the lawsuit early and pay a settlement fee or something?