Denton said the suit was a convoluted attempt to cover up a separate tape, not showing sex but instead showing Hogan using racial slurs. It was nearly like I was relieved that they believed me…I was so out of it, I didn’t hear the numbers until we got upstairs. “I never should have said what I said”.
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“We’ll win this case when we get back to the appeals court”, he continued, adding that the original story “may not be your cup of tea”, but that “the outlandishness of the verdict does draw further attention of the media and the appeals court to the unsafe precedent that risks being set”. I knew how unhappy I would be.
In case you missed it, after only three hours of deliberation on Monday, March 21, Gawker Media was hit with $15 million in punitive damages while its founder Nick Denton will have to personally pay $10 million.
The trial between Hogan-whose real name is Terry Bollea-and Gawker began when the latter posted a sex tape featuring Hogan and Heather Clem, then the wife of his friend Todd Clem, known as Florida radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge.
“If this was WrestleMania, he was in the ring with me, it was just me and him, wouldn’t it be fun?” he told Good Morning America.
Added Hogan, “It’s just smoke and mirrors with them …”
Hogan’s legal team argued that Gawker invaded the pro wrestler’s privacy by publishing the video.
The unsealed documents, released to the public last week, indicate that Clem told federal investigators that Hogan was aware he was being recorded.
“When you have cases and they involve famous people or the entertainment industry or tabloid media you tend to start talking in bigger numbers and that’s not necessarily justifiable”.
Gawker’s Scumbag-in-Chief Nick Denton has responded to the verdict with an epic rant on the site, blaming everybody but himself for his misfortune. Hogan said he had the option to settle with the gossip website, before the trial began, but decided against it because he wanted to expose the website for what they did to people.
“I don’t agree with any of the stuff I did”, he said.
“Even when I was there it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. So that means anyone who has anything to do with social media is fair game”, Hogan said.
Denton’s remarks may seek to put Hogan on the defensive as he begins a celebratory round of broadcast interviews.
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Fabio Bertoni, general counsel to the New Yorker, brings up the Edwards-Hunter sex tape in a new column lamenting the impact of the Hogan verdict on the news industry. “You had a major celebrity who had talked incessantly about his sex life”, Denton told Squawk Box co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin.
