Thiel reportedly paid roughly $10 million to back Hogan, who won more than $115 million from Gawker in a Florida jury trial in March.
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Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, was highly critical of the situation and condemned the ramifications of Thiel’s involvement.
Best known for his role at PayPal, Thiel talked about Gawker as an evil company that makes money by destroying other people’s lives for no reason. Thiel was the subject of a 2007 Gawker article calling him gay, published when he was keeping mum publicly about his sexuality.
He told the New York Times he has paid lawyers to bring cases against Gawker, accusing it of bullying.
In a scheme that could have been written for a reality television show, Thiel conceived a cynical gambit by which a friendly Florida court permitted a company-crushing verdict to stand in a freaky case-involving taboo sex and hot gossip brought by local hero Hulk Hogan.
A billionaire tech mogul rumored to be behind Hulk Hogan’s high-profile lawsuit against Gawker has admitted he bankrolled the case, telling The New York Times Wednesday that he wanted to put the gossip website out of business. A Florida judge on Wednesday denied Gawker’s motion for a new trial in Hogan’s sex-video ca.
Thiel did not immediate respond to a request for comment.
He warned that Thiel’s actions were likely to heighten public fears about the “unaccountable power of the billionaire class”.
Hogan lawyer David Houston released a statement saying that the judge’s decision reflects that “Gawker has failed and continues to fail in recognizing their obligation to Bollea for their reprehensible behaviour and method of doing what they call journalism”. Still, it’s true that after his own outing, the investor did preemptively assemble a team to seek out and support other Gawker “victims”, as he sees it.
A longtime supporter of libertarian causes, Thiel recently said he was backing real estate financier Donald Trump in his bid for president.
Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of the news site Vox.com, said that “even if Gawker was wrong to post those articles, Thiel’s method of reprisal is risky”.
Gawker is counting on the verdict to be overturned on appeal and has not said whether it can afford the full $US140 million ($194 million) payout.
“I know nothing of these so-called financial arrangements or any of that stuff”, Ayyadurai said.
Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued the media and celebrity-focused website in 2012 over the publication of a tape showing him having sex with a friend’s wife, claiming the publication cost him endorsements and inflicted emotional harm.
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The online media company is now under turmoil after losing an expensive lawsuit. Abram said he received a tip from lawyer friends that a certain benefactor was supporting Hulk Hogan financially, but did not take it seriously back then.
