It’s unclear when exactly Thiel began supporting Hulk Hogan, who sued Gawker Media, Nick Denton, and former Gawker editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio in 2012 after Gawker posted video excerpts depicting Hogan having sex with the wife of his ex-best friend, a Tampa-area radio shock jock named Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Gawker has since attempted to appeal the judgement – but it was upheld yesterday.
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The chip on Thiel’s shoulder is pretty unequivocally a decade-old item that ran on Gawker’s Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag – a site which the company later shut down.
Partner at Founders Fund Peter Thiel participates in a panel discussion at the New York Times 2015 DealBook Conference at the Whitney Museum of American Art on November 3, 2015 in New York City. “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”, he said.
These requests were, however, declined on Wednesday as the court had found the media website guilty of violating Hogan’s privacy, attorneys said.
“I can defend myself”, he was quoted as saying.
But, according to the latest developments in the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media lawsuits, this tabloid-like tale could be a reality.
A six-person jury in March awarded $60 million to Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, for emotional distress and $55 million for economic damages. The company is appealing. The New York Post first reported Gawker had hired an investment banker to explore its options.
Gawker is counting on the verdict to be overturned on appeal and has not said whether it can afford the full $140 million.
The statement continues: “We recently engaged [Houlihan Lokey media banker] Mark Patricof to advise us and that seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new”.
The Hogan trial in the Florida city of St. Petersburg has been closely watched by legal experts because of its implications for privacy and free expression online.
Thiel concluded that it’s not his job to decide the future of Gawker. He described his financial backing of the cases against the company as one of the “greater philanthropic things” he has ever done. Thiel may have the Count of Monte Cristo flair for chilled revenge, but he isn’t even the first billionaire in the past year to put his wealth toward lawsuits meant to destroy a media organization.
“Yay for investor Peter Thiel!”.
Gawker and Thiel have a contentious history already; the website outed him as gay in 2007.
But maybe the bigger reason Thiel’s scheme doesn’t open any floodgates is that those particular floodgates were never really closed. It is called “litigation financing”.
“Thiel’s tactics in going after Gawker are very, very frightening for anybody who believes in freedom of speech; they’re also extremely effective, in an evil-genius kind of way”, Salmon wrote.
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New York Times readers themselves raised similar points, though some cheered Thiel.
