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Two Soylentils wrote in with an update on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. After these stories were submitted, it appears to have been confirmed by The New York Times that Thiel paid $10 million to fund the lawsuit.
Peter Thiel Funded Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker
Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist and libertarian who we have reported on several times, reportedly bankrolled former wrestler Hulk Hogan's (real name: Terry Bollea) lawsuit against Gawker. After Gawker published a sex tape featuring Bollea, Bollea sued and was eventually awarded $140 million by a jury. That decision is being appealed.
Thiel has had several run-ins with Gawker's reporting on his political and financial decisions, but the most prominent incident was in 2007, when the website's then-running gossip vertical Valleywag outed Thiel's sexual orientation in a post titled, "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people."
Thiel, who is now open about being gay, later called Valleywag "the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda."
Although the exact details of the arrangement between Thiel and Bollea are unknown, if Thiel negotiated for a share of the lawsuit's proceeds, he may get to stick it to Gawker while earning millions of dollars.
[Continues...]
Hulk Hogan's Sex Tape and a Tech Billionaire's Revenge on Gawker
El Reg reports
Hogan's legal team specifically dropped a part of his lawsuit that would have seen Gawker's insurance company pick up the tab. On top of which, Hogan reportedly turned down a $10M settlement offer from Gawker to stop the case going to court.
Increasingly, it looked as though, [rather than compensating Hogan,] the lawsuit's main focus was to ruin Gawker--which does not have $140M in assets and would have to declare bankruptcy if the judgment stands.
Previous: Hulk Hogan Awarded $115 Million in Privacy Suit Against Gawker Media
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday May 28 2016, @02:19PM
Perhaps. The enemy of my enemy is still the enemy of my enemy. You should know why you don't out people. Owen Thomas should have known too. Coming out ends friendships and breaks families apart. It destroys careers. It shouldn't be that way, but it is that way. Sometimes a person gets lucky, and coming out does none of those things.
Now, there is the Lyin' Ted exception (well, asshole Republican exception), but I don't think that applies here. Seeing as how that one is usually tied to pedophilia or questionable expenses, there's usually not much of a grey area.
Thomas justifies his article by implying that it was already common knowledge that Thiel was gay:
I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for discussion beyond that circle. I thought that attitude was retrograde and homophobic, and that informed my reporting. I believe that he was out and not in the closet.
I find that self-contradictory. Thomas admits that Thiel's sexual orientation was not fit for discussion beyond a “wide circle,” but then he leaps to presuming that constitutes being out. He essentially asserts that he knew better than Thiel about how to handle knowledge of Thiel's sexual orientation. That strikes me as a dangerous notion.
As far as free speech, the media needs to be responsible about what they publish. Thiel has a point:
I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest….
I can defend myself. Most of the people they attack are not people in my category. They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can’t defend themselves.
There is no public interest in outing somebody simply because one thinks they should be out in the interests of some greater good. It's not one's decision to make. If there were credible evidence that Pat McCrory, just to pick on him, were secretly a crossdresser and desired to be a woman, there would be a public interest in publishing that. (Hence the Lyin' Ted exception.)
It's unfortunate that our legal system is pay to play. I don't know how to fix that. I don't see a conflict here with free speech. As Mary Anne Franks (prof University of Miami School of Law) states in TFA, “If you really do have concerns about the merits of this case, finding out who bankrolled it doesn’t really help you at all.”
Thiel also gets into his methodology.
Without going into all the details, we would get in touch with the plaintiffs who otherwise would have accepted a pittance for a settlement, and they were obviously quite happy to have this sort of support….
I would underscore that I don’t expect to make any money from this. This is not a business venture.
So it's troubling that we have a pay to play system, but it's also troubling that said pay to play system encourages people to settle for less than being made whole. So whether or not Thiel bankrolled Bollea's lawsuit is immaterial if we're comparing the current system to a hypothetical system where Bollea could have brought the case to trial on his own.
The one thing that does leave a bad taste in my mouth is that the part of the suit having Gawker's insurance cover the damages was dropped. It would have been the higher road to allow the insurance company to pay out the damages. Then it would be between Gawker and insurance just what the cost of their giant bullhorn is in terms of doing business. It would be much more satisfying for Gawker's big mouth to price them out of the insurance market.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday May 30 2016, @03:57AM
It would have been the higher road to allow the insurance company to pay out the damages.
Not at all, then it would have just been about the money. Beyond getting the insurance company out of the picture these lawyers have managed to get Gawker's principle held -personally- liable. They don't want the money from some insurance company who would just pass it on in higher rates for everyone. The idea is to break Gawker Media and to break Nick Denton personally, in a very long, public and painful process as an example to others. They don't have anything like $140Mil so the actual money they end up getting will probably pay legal fees and pay for a big party to celebrate. It certainly will not make up for the damage to Hogan's reputation. But they will have provided a great public service by cleaning out a vile hive of scum and villainy.