The legal saga between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media appears to have finally reached its conclusion.
Court documents in the case revealed that Gawker and Hogan have reached a $31 million settlement. Hogan was previously awarded $140 million in damages by a Florida jury after Gawker had published a sex tape featuring him without his consent. The company immediately vowed to appeal the jury’s verdict, but Gawker founder Nick Denton wrote in a post on his website on Wednesday that the legal fight would have been too expensive given that Hogan is backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
“After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over.” Denton wrote.
“Yes, we were confident the appeals court would reduce or eliminate the runaway Florida judgment against Gawker, the writer of the Hogan story and myself personally. And we expected to prevail in those other two lawsuits by clients of Charles Harder, the lawyer backed by Peter Thiel.” Denton wrote. “But all-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight.”
Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy shortly after the initial verdict. They were acquired by Univision Communications at auction for $135 million.
Hogan seemed to comment on the settlement in a tweet on Wednesday morning:
“Peter Thiel has achieved his objectives. His proxy, Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan, has a claim on the company and my personal assets after winning a $140 million trial court judgment in his Florida privacy case. Even if that decision is reversed or reduced on appeal, it is too late for Gawker itself. Its former editor, who wrote the story about Hogan, has a $230 million hold on his checking account. The flagship site, a magnet for most of the lawsuits marshaled by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, has for most media companies become simply too dangerous to own.”
—Gawker founder Nick Denton in his farewell post, titled “How Things Work”
If it wasn’t clear before that the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker lawsuit is a whole lot bigger than Hulk Hogan or even Gawker, the events of the last few weeks have made it more obvious than ever before.
Of course, the revelation two months ago that billionaire Peter Thiel had been funding Hogan’s lawsuit (and others against Gawker) was a game changer, but the effects of Thiel’s influence weren’t as obvious. Before, it was about Hogan dropping the count that would force Gawker’s insurance company to pay and his constant refusal to settle a risky, legally complicated case.
Now? There’s a lot more to it.
The $140+ million judgment in Hogan’s favor and the peculiarities of Florida law, which make it so that a bond in the amount of the judgment (capped at $50 million) is needed to appeal, led to Gawker Media itself filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. An asset auction, with publisher Ziff Davis as the “stalking horse” bidder, is coming in a few weeks.
As for Denton and Daulerio, while they are theoretically indemnified by Gawker, the bankruptcy effectively makes it so that they’re not. As a result, Denton filed personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 1st, and Daulerio is expected to follow soon.
The full extent of how Thiel’s involvement is impacting the case became apparent in bankruptcy court. Hogan, as the owner of the largest debt, wields quite a bit of influence on the creditor committee.
As I first reported on LawNewz a few weeks back, the committee has already expressed its intention enter discussions with potential buyers “to make sure that any defamatory, tortious content that’s currently on the web pages today is taken down, in connection with the sale.”
Gawker has not lost any defamation cases, and in fact, one of their outstanding defamation cases is over an article where it’s impossible to read the article as having defamed the subject.
That set the stage for what Hogan had planned next. Denton and Daulerio got brief injunctions against the judgment as part of Gawker’s bankruptcy filing. When they expired, Denton and Gawker went back to bankruptcy court on July 19th to get a six week extension.
The idea was simple: Denton was acknowledging that bankruptcy was inevitable, but it benefited everyone involved, including Hogan, to put it off until after the sale. He’s the point man, the one who has the connections and knows how the maximize Gawker’s value. Personal bankruptcy would take too much time and energy away from the sale, possibly lowering the sale price at auction.
So why not wait a few weeks?
For no real reason, Hogan fought this, making the case that Gawker can run fine without Denton. In the end, while the judge seemed less than happy with Hogan’s counsel wasting his time with largely fabricated allegations of deception against Gawker, he felt that Gawker wouldn’t suffer irreparable harm in the sale so he found for Hogan, who was now artificially limiting how much of the judgment he could collect.
Wait, what?
You see, Hogan’s not actually acting like a creditor. A creditor placing a priority on getting all of his money would not have done what he did. Someone with the goal of getting straight up revenge would. Your mileage may vary as to if that applies to Hogan, but it certainly applies to Peter Thiel.
It’s bad enough that you have to wonder if, at this point, Hogan is also being paid by Thiel to keep this going.
What’s going on in bankruptcy court is not the only reason to think that, though: When Hogan brought his latest lawsuit against Gawker (which is frozen by the bankruptcy), alleging that they leaked his racist comments without any actual evidence, he brought those comments back into the news and public discourse at a point where they had largely evaporated.
By pursuing a lawsuit centered around them, he virtually assured that WWE wouldn’t bring him back any time soon because he was putting the revelation of his racism (not to mention how two-faced he was in talking that way about Cecile Barker, who thought he was Hogan’s best friend) was going to be at the center of his life for, potentially, the next few years.
Does limiting his opportunities to make money like that sound like something Hulk Hogan would do? Remember, this is a guy whose WCW contract paid him $20,000 a month just to wear NWO shirts away from work as a brand ambassador.
Launching a lawsuit with an incredibly slim likelihood of succeeding that would keep him out of WWE and other mainstream gigs is not a Hulk Hogan thing to do unless he has a benefactor of some kind. And to some degree, we know he already does.
Is it really a leap to think that Thiel is also supporting Hogan’s day to day life? Even the $30 million or so that Hogan would need to get his old lifestyle back isn’t a big expenditure for Thiel at all.
If you had already made the decision to treat Hogan as a former pro wrestling personality, then the implications of his pact with Thiel could very well be proving you right.
Depending on your point of view, Hulk Hogan went one step further towards either succeeding or failing in his lawsuit against Gawker Media last Friday when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the type that allows the company to continue operating.
In the week since Hulk Hogan sued Gawker again, albeit as a co-defendant of other parties, there’s been a lot of speculation about what he’s actually trying to do, including in the many mainstream stories about the new case. Opinions were mixed, to say the least.
On Monday, May 2nd at 12:17:59 p.m. ET, Terry Gene Bollea, professionally known as Hulk Hogan, filed a lawsuit in Florida’s Pinellas County Court against the following *listed in the order they appear on the caption of the case):
Hulk Hogan aka Terry Bollea has filed a second lawsuit against Gawker, claiming the company was responsible for leaking the contents of a sealed document which led to the end of his relationship with WWE.
Bollea’s side has claimed that Gawker was responsible for leaking the contents of the tape of Hogan’s racist remarks to The National Enquirer, which published them. When the WWE was informed that the remarks were coming out, they immediately severed all ties with Hogan and tried to remove most of the mentions of Hogan from its web site, including his name from their Hall of Fame.
The lawsuit noted that Nick Denton, the CEO of Gawker, had written a blog piece predicting that Hogan’s real secret would soon be revealed.
The contents of the tapes were sealed. However, long before they were sealed, a web site, The Dirty.com had done a story discussing the tapes much earlier which for whatever reason, didn’t get the same media play, largely because there was a description of the remarks without the actual wording of the remarks.
Hogan is also suing Florida DJ Mike Calta, known as Cowhead, who he claimed sent at least one of the secretly recorded sex tapes to Gawker.
For reasons not exactly clear, law enforcement officials never filed charges against Calta or anyone involved in what was believed to have been stealing the tapes from Bubba the Love Sponge, who had recorded Hogan having sex with wife Heather.
The new lawsuit doesn’t list specific monetary damages.
Whatever going on right now in Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker clearly goes way beyond the courtroom. Media manipulation, while not new to the case, seems to be more prominent in recent weeks, or at least more obvious. By and large, the lines appear to be drawn as Hogan cozying up to “old media” companies that still have physical hard copy publications, while Gawker continues to live up to their stated goals of corporate transparency, with founder Nick Denton and others being much more available for quotes, interviews, etc.
After little to no movement for the better part of a year, WWE got the class action stockholder lawsuit dismissed this past week. We covered this in detail back in issue #1044 (June 26, 2015) after discovering the back and forth that was going on involving the statements of Brian Maddox, who was formerly WWE’s Vice President, Global Sales. The firm handling the case for the plaintiffs had filed an amended complaint a year ago with a lot of new, specific allegations from Confidential Witness 1 (or “CW1”), who turned out to be Maddox. This included everything from things we knew (WWE’s social media numbers count a number of fans multiple times when they follow multiple WWE accounts, the issues with ad rates stemming from the number of low income viewers, etc.) to new information (not allowing anyone to sponsor the ring canvas has hurt ad rates and sponsor variety, WWE would drop sponsors for no apparent reason) to somewhat specious claims about WWE’s total audience.
The trial of Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media, Nick Denton, and A.J. Daulerio (who we’ll collectively call “Gawker” unless we need to be more specific) turned out to be quite possibly even more of a circus than anyone even could have imagine, as of this writing, it resulted in Hogan being awarded $115 million in compensatory damages with punitive damages still to come. The jury split the compensatory damages as $60 million in emotional damagers and $55 million in lost wages, with the latter number determined in large part from how much Hogan claimed he would have made if he had decided to market the video. He most likely won’t get close to that, if anything. There’s a question of exactly what Gawker will need to do to appeal, as Florida has various laws relating to posting a bond to secure the award when filing an appeal. There are alternatives, but the options including Gawker trying to stay the bond with the trial judge (unlikely given Judge Campbell’s rulings up to this point), posting the maximum allowed $50 million bond, or having to hire a bond company and paying about $12 million so the bond company can post $50 million.
The Florida jury just came back with a verdict awarding Hulk Hogan $115 million in his case with Gawker Media. The case will obviously be appealed and there is very little chance he will be getting anything close to that figure. But the verdict sends a strong message to the media regarding publishing sex tapes of people without their consent.
The jury broke down the verdict as $55 million in lost economic injuries and $60 million in emotional distress.
Gawker would have to post $50 million to take it to the appeals court, which makes that aspect tricky as well, as the verdict could force the company into either bankruptcy or sale. There was a great deal of potential evidence Gawker was hoping to introduce that didn’t make the trial due to the rulings of judge Pamela Campbell and Gawker is going to use that in its appeal.
The following is from Gawker: “As the trial concludes, we’re disappointed the jury was unable to see key evidence and hear testimony from the most important witness. So, it may be necessary for the appeals court to resolve this case. Hulk Hogan’s best friend Bubba the Love Spongewho made the tape and offered up his wife in the first place, originally told his radio listeners that Hogan knew he was being taped. The jury was only able to hear a questionable version of events. Bubba should have been required to appear in court and explain what really happened. There is more to the story. We expect the upcoming release of improperly sealed documents, important evidence that the jury should have been able to see, will begin revealing the true facts that the jury deserved to know about during deliberations.”
It’s generally believed Bubba was lying when he said Hogan knew he was being taped. Amazing, out of all the best friends in the world this guy could have chosen, he picked Bubba and Ed Leslie. Well, at least he’s still got Jimmy Hart.
If you need some entertainment and courtroom drama is your jam, you can live stream the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker Media trial live below. What a time to be alive, eh?
If you haven’t been following the case, Hogan (aka Terry Bollea) is suing Gawker for $100 million for publishing a clip of a sex tape of himself and the wife of Bubba Clem (aka radio host) Bubba The Love Sponge), along with a long article to accompany it in 2012.
At the basis, Hogan is claiming the post is a violation of his privacy, claiming the video was made without his consent or knowledge. Gawker is claiming their post is protected under the First Amendment because of Hogan’s past discussing his sex life.
A six-member jury will ultimately make the call.
If you’re looking for in-depth analysis and conversation about the case, check out the Figure Four Weekly newsletter archives for some in-depth analysis from our David Bixenspan. You can also follow trial analysis and thoughts on #HulkvsGawk on Twitter.
