Denton was apparently named as a defendant in the lawsuit as well, and the court yielded a $10M judgment against him personally.
Gawker also gave Denton a $200K personal loan right before bankruptcy for the purposes of potential bankruptcy filings related to the lawsuit; this might be a good case for piercing the corporate veil as well.
Is Denton a complete moron to think this was going to be OK. Given the way Gawker ran the court case the evidence is piling up that Denton is not the smartest tool in the shed.
I think it may be that he got away with it for a decade, and so it became normalized in his head. For the rest of us, Gawker was a lawsuit waiting to happen; for him, it was literally business as usual.
A gay, foreign media magnate known for publishing lurid expose (in addition to a lot of excellent and funny reporting [1]) was never likely to receive sympathetic treatment from a jury of people from Hulk Hogan's hometown.
They were trying to seek some money to cover the $50M in collateral that would be required for appeal (to be held in trust).
Even at this stage, Gawker/Denton offered Bollea shares in Gawker from their expected sale, _and_ Bollea _accepted_.
And then withdrew. I can't help but suspect if it was because Thiel's lawyers advised him not to, the same way they dropped the tort that was covered by Gawker's insurance.
I find this interesting too - it was one thing when it was just that insurance claim. Then Hogan is willing to accept collateral from Gawker's prospective sale (indicating it's not him that's looking for Gawker's abject destruction), but lawyers, funded by Thiel, have him drop this, too.
I think one of the fundamental tenets of justice (and to be quite clear, I feel Denton and Gawker both deserve to be reamed - for varying severities of the word - for their actions in this case) is the right to face your "accuser"/opponent. Not what looks more and more to me like their puppet.
Gawker had indemnified Denton before this lawsuit came to pass, agreeing to cover legal costs related to Denton being personally sued in matters that related to Gawker.
I think other comments here implying there's some looting going on are not quite on point.
The "Limited" in an LLC means that an investor in the company cannot lose more than the capital they've invested. It doesn't do anything to protect officers.
Secret in a way that they had to disclose this to Florida courts, because it was couple days before bankruptcy.
>“During the week ending June 10, 2016, at the same time that it was negotiating a DIP loan that has an effective interest rate near 30%, either Debtor or one of its affiliates made a payment of $200,000 in the form of a loan to the CEO for purposes of paying for personal bankruptcy counsel … The sole disclosure we found of this ‘loan’ was buried in a bullet point to an exhibit to Debtors’ motion for DIP financing. This loan was concealed from the Florida Court”
"First, Gawker has indemnified Denton, meaning that it has agreed to pay his legal tab. So theoretically, a judgment against Denton becomes Gawker's liability. But Hogan says that this indemnification agreement specifically precludes anything Denton does that constitutes misconduct or gross negligence. Hogan asserts that what the jury in the sex-tape case concluded qualifies as such and means Denton isn't indemnified. And even if otherwise, Hogan still doesn't believe this merits an injunction."
It's definitely not proven problematic. Of course Hogan's lawyers are complaining about it, but it's not contentious that Gawker had indemnification in place.
How in the world did the court come up with a $140M sum for the settlement? This seems so excessive, it is actually comical. Obviously, everyone has beleaguered this point, but I feel obligated to state it one more time: Scumbaggery and poor taste shock journalism are pretty shitty, but fuck Peter Theil if he thinks setting a precedent like this is net good for anything other than his petty vendetta.
edit: Yes, Gawker and Valleywag are pretty shitty. They probably have cause 140M worth of damage, just not to Hulk Hogan. Also, setting this precedent is so fucking dangerous that to argue that you don't like them and they deserve it is so infantile that if we accepted such arguments we would have shed nearly all of the rights afforded to us bu the U.S. Constitution.
I'm not sure how they came up with it, but the figure was not a settlement. It was a judgment awarded by a jury. I don't know if it was six or 12, but a jury of citizens told Gawker to go pound sand.
The precedent isn't about the quality of your journalism, it's "get a billionaire angry, get sued into oblivion". That's what scares people. Mother Jones nearly faced the same fate for very good journalism.
Don't forget the part about publishing a sex tape without knowledge of the party involved. Mother Jones won their lawsuit, because the statements they published were both true and in the public interest. There is a very large difference between what Gawker did and what Mother Jones did, and the judgments reflect that.
Mother Jones won but nearly went bankrupt in the process of defending itself, and bankrupting Gawker by legal fees was always Thiel's plan--that's why he was funding a variety of lawsuits against Gawker, not just Hogan's. If one came home, as Hogan's did, it just hastened the day.
That's a problem with the legal system that's not tied to journalism at all. It could happen to any company or person at any time. As long as the case looks to have enough merit to avoid dismissal, then rack those legal costs up! The only precedent related to journalism here is that journalists doing illegal things is still illegal.
It actually is about the quality of the journalism though, as the point was the "reporting" (gossip and 'mean girls'-esque harrassing) turned out to be illegal. Was Mother Jones accused of >illegal< reporting?
Mother Jones won on the merits of its journalism, but still nearly went bankrupt defending itself. Winning is the faster version, but Thiel was funding several lawsuits against Gawker to bleed them dry--takes longer, but works just as well.
And remember, a legal victory isn't over until the appeals are complete. Gawker collapsed before exhausting its appeals--again, financial exhaustion, not moral defeat.
Well if this is a reasonable precedent, why not apply it against the Murdoch tabloids -- papers that do actual, real harm? Like you know... hacking missing (and dead) girls' voicemail, leading to her parents getting false hope.
Now that would be a good precedent.
This is just billionaire bullying -- power of money and twisted law. And it is not just Theil behind this.
It's amazing to see how the left latched onto this as a "billionaire buys lawsuit" narrative, as opposed to the much more accurate "shitty darling of the left that habitually engaged in abuse got its comeuppance" narrative.
Gawker repeatedly, knowingly, unabashedly, broke the law. They repeatedly, knowingly, unabashedly, tried to ruin innocent people's lives. They absolutely deserve everything that happened to them and more. Thiel is a goddamned hero for the part he played.
Edit:
>Also. This has nothing to do with left v. right.
Only people on the left believe this. GawkMedia was loathed by the right as pretty much the worst example of how bad leftist media could get. Trust me, we were all popping champagne and lighting off fireworks when we got the news on this side of the aisle.
Darling of the left? Is that really how Denton has been described? I don't know anyone -- left or right -- who thinks Denton is anything more than a scumbag.
Not Gawker directly, but Gawker Media is certainly a darling of certain (unkind) parts of the left. Jezebel is a Gawker label, and it's been top source for share-on-Facebook level left-journalism for years.
Not disagreeing with your points on Gawker's despicable behavior, but this doesn't answer the question of how the damages were calculated. It also doesn't address the precedent issue, beyond voicing support for exacting revenge as justified.
What precedent, exactly? That doing illegal things is still illegal, even if you're a journalist? Or that you can get sued into oblivion, which could and did happen before this case?
I believe the precedent the GP was referring to, to which the parent was replying—and to whom I replied—is a billionaire using the legal system and a case to which he's not a party to seek revenge by bankrolling that case. I see no one disputing the legitimacy of suing Gawker or defending Gawker's disgusting and illegal behavior.
You realize that this is the same mechanism used by groups like the EFF, ACLU, and NAACP to bring cases? And what about a lawyer agreeing to take a case on contingency; isn't that technically the lawyer funding the case, and not the plaintiff?
Also, what is the alternative here? Sure, Hogan maybe has enough money that he could have funded the case. Could Joe Smith working his 9-to-5 have funded that case? If not, how is he supposed to get justice, if this exact situation happens to him? Money is already a problem in court, isn't restricting the funding sources of the common person therefore a negative outcome?
Finally, this was discussed the last time this case came up:
I'm not sure why you've decided to argue with me. You seem to have erroneously concluded I have some issue here for you to fix. The GP is the person who had questions. I merely replied to someone who made a fairly combative and unnecessarily political reply to point out the GP's concerns were in no way addressed—such is the way of political rants.
Sorry; I assumed that by replying to you and you replying to me that we were entering into a conversation. I am attempting to address your interpretation of the concerns raised by GP. Replying to your interpretation of the concerns seems like a natural place to do that.
As it is, your reply here was not really necessary.
It was $55 million for economic harm,$60 million for emotional distress and $25M punitive. That sex tape also revealed racist comments made by Hulk Hogan which costed him losing deals and sponsorship.
they probably calculated the valuation of Gawker and then added some extra. 'pain and suffering' 'damage to Hogan's brand and earning power' In some instances the judge will reduce it. This time they didn't.
Is this some sort of gamergate leakage, that makes Gawker "left" because they are united with Kotaku, who gamergate hates, and social-justice fighers hate gamergate, and social-justic fighters are "left", so Gawker is "left"?
Gawker Media, along with Vice, Salon, Vox, Buzzfeed, HuffPo, etc., are left wing online publications. It has nothing to with GamerGate. It would take some impressive sophistry to claim they're not left wing, just as it would take quite some sophistry to claim Breitbart, Daily Wire, National Review, etc weren't right wing.
Well, you could get a little less myopic, zoom out of the purely American perspective where left=Democrat and right=Republican, and see that none of the publications you named are left in any way.
(Vox sometimes has leftists writing for it, but I wouldn't call it left as a whole.)
Gawker defends progressive ideas and bashes conservative ideas.
Of course in a world where you can get kicked out of your job as a CEO of Mozilla for defending the traditional family, it may look like there's no other option.
> They repeatedly, knowingly, unabashedly, tried to ruin innocent people's lives.
Can you actually prove that anyone's life was ruined?
They mostly "reported" on sex tapes and other weird stuff, like the origins of Trump's hair. And my opinion, as I can imagine 99,9% of others, about Hogan's wrestling persona or skills has nothing to do with his out of wedlock shenanigans.
And if you see a 140MM win from a lawsuit for Hogan as a form of ruining someone's life, then by all means please have someone ruin my life the same way!!!
They released the list of all NY gun owners, complete with their addresses. Some people had gotten their guns as a measure against their stalkers, which now had their legal addresses.
This also increased the risk of the relevant houses being hit by thieves, who could then use their new illegal guns for crime purposes.
Only the left has a problem with his support of Hogan, because it was an attack on your tribe. Stop assuming the rest of us share your outrage. We don't. Thiel essentially insured Hogan's lawsuit, so that Hogan could proceed without fear of losing millions in legal costs. That's it. Billionaire swoops in and enables aggrieved party to sue evil corporation for abominable behaviour. It's practically an Erin Brockovich story.
Buddy. Give the 'the left' stuff a rest. We're talking about a libertarian going way out of his way to attack a (horrible, tabloid) press organization here. Same guy bankrolled/backed one of the biggest private enablers of security state overreach in the country. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy.
Also, as far as you deciding what 'the left' thinks and then feeling superior to them for it.. I mean, whatever floats your boat, but it's not exactly the path to enlightenment.
whoa, lets not equate spying on people to release their secrets publicly for ad revenue with secretly spying on people to maintain a status quo of peace. without defending the security industrial complex, we can pretty much all agree that unconsentualy publishing private sex tapes for money is a different type of moral turpitude than big brother.
A subset and some very well-to-do SV personalities who should have no tangible connection to Gawker but seemingly are much invested in its future, hmmmm?
With good fortune it should end in a battle of fisticuffs.
I don't think anyone, left-or-right thinks of Denton as anything except a gossip peddler.
It is hard to judge, but the divisions in this case don't appear to be right vs left. It seems to me it has more been aligned with people's views on a right to free speech vs a right to privacy. There seem to have been plenty on the right who think that the right to free speech should have trumped the right to privacy in this case.
I would agree that left vs right isn't the best way to categorize the disagreements here, but I think its understandable that some people might think that 'the left' was championing Gawker. There were quite a few low brow leftist media outlets who jumped to Gawkers defense and tried to demonize Thiel.
maybe a better explanation is that "aggregators" republish whatever is outrageous and visible that day. the "news" is an echo chamber of people that spend their day surfing reddit and ending their contributions to the fourth estate with h/t
Gawker was guilty of illegally publishing a recorded sex tape.
If I did this to someone I would go to jail.
If Gawker didn't want to go bankrupt, then maybe it shouldn't have illegally recorded and published a sex tape.
This is NOT just "poor taste shock journalism". Just like how setting up a hidden camera in a girl's high school locker room wouldn't just be "in poor taste".
I assume there's no obligation, and he also agreed to settle, but it would seem to me that there might be argument in that the punitive damages were excessive, if the plaintiffs were willing to accept a settlement of one fiftieth of one percent the amount they sought from the party that actually released the video as they sought from the party that publicized the video (note, "punitive" damages. Of course Gawker had more power to damage character than Bubba Clem, which is why I deliberately used only the $25M, not the $140M, which encapsulated economic and emotional damages).
Given how much you really, really have to screw around as a news organization to be liable, and let's not forget defying a judge (not in a proper appeal sort of way), they pretty much got what was coming to them.
In a different industry, ask Arthur Anderson about corporate capital punishment. Their ruling was vacated and they still died.
Wouldn't the smarter thing be -- hire some Indian or Chinese person to leak it AFTER you've already written an entire story about the leak and the video and 'scooped' it ? Just saying -- they could've done it better if they wanted the story that bad... Sad thing is -- THIS story is probably bigger than THAT story ever was.
> setting up a hidden camera in a girl's high school locker room wouldn't just be "in poor taste".
This statement is irrefutably true. However, the rest of your comment is either inaccurate factually or incorrect opinion. They didn't record the tape, and you are responding to my assertion that while they did wrong, the actual person who committed the "crime" (at lastly your analogy) settled for 5k vs. Gawkers 140m verdict. So, I find your argument to be a wholeheartedly emotional one, but not factual.
> The damages awarded to Mr. Bollea on Friday were compensatory: $55 million for economic harm and $60 million for emotional distress.
(+$25M punitive)
The numbers are nonsense (who has $60M worth of feelings?), but there you go.
I have no idea how $55M in economic harm was reached either.
Bollea's net worth, at it's peak, was $25M, and is now estimated at $8M - though most of that has been stripped by divorce, before any of this happened.
I am not sure how someone whose likely career income didn't reach $50M can now, in retirement, state that he suffered $50M in purely economic damages from this (remember, the emotional damage is separate, as is the punitive) - from what? Residuals on old WWF repeats? (Edit: he would still be entitled to these). The occasional celebrity endorsement?
I can't see any realistic justification that his earning power for the rest of his life would total $55M, let alone that $55M only covers the fraction of his income that he _lost_ because of this.
I agree. I will say that a case could be made in a different set of circumstances where some action caused a plaintiff to not only lose money, but also a steep opportunity cost which had to be forgone.
Not the case here at all. Especially since, if kim kardashian is any indication, people in and attached to sex tapes profit significantly[0].
Right, again - his career income likely never hit $55M. Even at the peak of his career it would only have been in the <$5M range (one of the Wrestlemania events that he headlined listed his salary for the event at $150K - and there certainly weren't events like that on a monthly basis, so even factoring in endorsements and royalties)...
So in retirement, no longer a public figure, aged 62, I have no idea how he can credibly argue he potentially lost $55M in income because of this. That he somehow "potentially" had $4M a year until his death (based on median age of death) of endorsements go up in smoke strains credibility. That seems to me to be some definite creative accounting that might be appealed.
My understanding is a lot of the excessiveness was due to the behavior of the defendant. They ignored court orders, they repeatedly tried to make a joke out of it and all around refused to take it seriously. This lead the judge to using the large end of the stick.
I doubt that. The amount of money Hogan will receive is impossible to be reasonably justified to amount of pain or embarrassment he has personally experienced because of said tape. I wouldn't be surprised if Thiel had huge footprint on Judge decision, which of course I cannot prove.
With such a short comment, I'm not sure if I'm parsing that correctly. Is it sickening because (a) you disapprove of the the parent commentator so casually throwing around baseless accusations, or (b) sickening to think of our judicial system possibly being so corrupt?
>How in the world did the court come up with a $140M sum for the settlement? This seems so excessive, it is actually comical.
+1. I feel like supporters of this decision are not really thinking about the numbers and would feel the same whether it was $1M , $10M, or $500M. The numbers are a pretty big part of this story though. I wonder what the largest emotional distress claim ever paid is. Hulk Hogan's distress is not more valuable because he is a celebrity.
I also find the economic damages highly suspect. The defense was not allowed to show the video of Hogan using racial slurs that Gawker also published, which probably hurt his celebrity status more than the sex tape.
Wow. I wonder if Thiel calculated the exact amount it would take to put Gawker out of business AND send Denton into personal bankruptcy. I mean, as a venture capitalist, you have pretty good insight into the finances of companies at a macro level. You're used to doing a little bit of "estimation from the outside", i.e. for both potential investments and for competitors. And he was also a lawyer.
This is the most ruthless revenge story ever, not least because it was all legal...
Thiel seems like a nerdy and curious fellow -- almost gentle, if he weren't so opinionated. But I guess everyone now knows not to mess with him.
Isn't it equally presumptuous of you to assume that he is? Your only source of evidence is his financing of an aggressive lawsuit against a known asshole and his company.
Thiel's explanation is that it was better to sift through the data torrent more judiciously than collecting every particle of data on every man, women and child forever. That is relevant surveillance on a limited pool vs mass surveillance. Supposing a state to be malevolent, then an efficient malevolent state ought to be still less evil than an inefficient malevolent one.
This was in the context of the sentiment after 9/11.
Unfortunately it later turns out the government with its god-like power of 'infinite money' decided to do both at the same time, which explains his disgust at the NSA post-Snowden.
Surely a giant database in the sky could never fall into enemy hands with data transfer and data medium densities growing exponentially.
In the future, wars shall be lost because some dork left a usb drive on a train somewhere.
And this creates the moral hazard of to big to fail banks.
When you try to fix a drug addicts problem, you don't just fix the symptom, but also must fix the cause. It's not too dissimilar for societal problems imho.
Just Google "arrested for ponzi fraud' ...tons of results. Alan Stanford..another one. High profile and wealthy are not immune to the long arm of justice. Martin Shkreli (pending)..Bernard Ebbers..Andrew Fastow ..many more
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 83.2 ms ] threadGawker also gave Denton a $200K personal loan right before bankruptcy for the purposes of potential bankruptcy filings related to the lawsuit; this might be a good case for piercing the corporate veil as well.
A gay, foreign media magnate known for publishing lurid expose (in addition to a lot of excellent and funny reporting [1]) was never likely to receive sympathetic treatment from a jury of people from Hulk Hogan's hometown.
Let's see how things go on appeal.
[1] http://gawker.com/heres-what-gawker-media-does-1779858799
Even at this stage, Gawker/Denton offered Bollea shares in Gawker from their expected sale, _and_ Bollea _accepted_.
And then withdrew. I can't help but suspect if it was because Thiel's lawyers advised him not to, the same way they dropped the tort that was covered by Gawker's insurance.
I find this interesting too - it was one thing when it was just that insurance claim. Then Hogan is willing to accept collateral from Gawker's prospective sale (indicating it's not him that's looking for Gawker's abject destruction), but lawyers, funded by Thiel, have him drop this, too.
I think one of the fundamental tenets of justice (and to be quite clear, I feel Denton and Gawker both deserve to be reamed - for varying severities of the word - for their actions in this case) is the right to face your "accuser"/opponent. Not what looks more and more to me like their puppet.
I think other comments here implying there's some looting going on are not quite on point.
>“During the week ending June 10, 2016, at the same time that it was negotiating a DIP loan that has an effective interest rate near 30%, either Debtor or one of its affiliates made a payment of $200,000 in the form of a loan to the CEO for purposes of paying for personal bankruptcy counsel … The sole disclosure we found of this ‘loan’ was buried in a bullet point to an exhibit to Debtors’ motion for DIP financing. This loan was concealed from the Florida Court”
http://www.businessinsider.com/hulk-hogan-gawker-made-secret...
"First, Gawker has indemnified Denton, meaning that it has agreed to pay his legal tab. So theoretically, a judgment against Denton becomes Gawker's liability. But Hogan says that this indemnification agreement specifically precludes anything Denton does that constitutes misconduct or gross negligence. Hogan asserts that what the jury in the sex-tape case concluded qualifies as such and means Denton isn't indemnified. And even if otherwise, Hogan still doesn't believe this merits an injunction."
It's definitely not proven problematic. Of course Hogan's lawyers are complaining about it, but it's not contentious that Gawker had indemnification in place.
edit: Yes, Gawker and Valleywag are pretty shitty. They probably have cause 140M worth of damage, just not to Hulk Hogan. Also, setting this precedent is so fucking dangerous that to argue that you don't like them and they deserve it is so infantile that if we accepted such arguments we would have shed nearly all of the rights afforded to us bu the U.S. Constitution.
Also. This has nothing to do with left v. right.
a precedent that if you engage in trashy tabloid "journalism" and egregiously invade people's privacy that you can end up sued into oblivion?
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable precedent.
And remember, a legal victory isn't over until the appeals are complete. Gawker collapsed before exhausting its appeals--again, financial exhaustion, not moral defeat.
Now that would be a good precedent.
This is just billionaire bullying -- power of money and twisted law. And it is not just Theil behind this.
Gawker repeatedly, knowingly, unabashedly, broke the law. They repeatedly, knowingly, unabashedly, tried to ruin innocent people's lives. They absolutely deserve everything that happened to them and more. Thiel is a goddamned hero for the part he played.
Edit:
>Also. This has nothing to do with left v. right.
Only people on the left believe this. GawkMedia was loathed by the right as pretty much the worst example of how bad leftist media could get. Trust me, we were all popping champagne and lighting off fireworks when we got the news on this side of the aisle.
Also, what is the alternative here? Sure, Hogan maybe has enough money that he could have funded the case. Could Joe Smith working his 9-to-5 have funded that case? If not, how is he supposed to get justice, if this exact situation happens to him? Money is already a problem in court, isn't restricting the funding sources of the common person therefore a negative outcome?
Finally, this was discussed the last time this case came up:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11878742
As it is, your reply here was not really necessary.
Lot of words, only to realize I may have misread your post entirely. Redacting.
(Vox sometimes has leftists writing for it, but I wouldn't call it left as a whole.)
Of course in a world where you can get kicked out of your job as a CEO of Mozilla for defending the traditional family, it may look like there's no other option.
Others might simply call that reporting.
Can you actually prove that anyone's life was ruined?
They mostly "reported" on sex tapes and other weird stuff, like the origins of Trump's hair. And my opinion, as I can imagine 99,9% of others, about Hogan's wrestling persona or skills has nothing to do with his out of wedlock shenanigans.
And if you see a 140MM win from a lawsuit for Hogan as a form of ruining someone's life, then by all means please have someone ruin my life the same way!!!
Speak for yourself. I've nothing but respect for Thiel.
Only the left has a problem with his support of Hogan, because it was an attack on your tribe. Stop assuming the rest of us share your outrage. We don't. Thiel essentially insured Hogan's lawsuit, so that Hogan could proceed without fear of losing millions in legal costs. That's it. Billionaire swoops in and enables aggrieved party to sue evil corporation for abominable behaviour. It's practically an Erin Brockovich story.
Also, as far as you deciding what 'the left' thinks and then feeling superior to them for it.. I mean, whatever floats your boat, but it's not exactly the path to enlightenment.
i dont think hypocrisy is the right word
With good fortune it should end in a battle of fisticuffs.
It is hard to judge, but the divisions in this case don't appear to be right vs left. It seems to me it has more been aligned with people's views on a right to free speech vs a right to privacy. There seem to have been plenty on the right who think that the right to free speech should have trumped the right to privacy in this case.
maybe a better explanation is that "aggregators" republish whatever is outrageous and visible that day. the "news" is an echo chamber of people that spend their day surfing reddit and ending their contributions to the fourth estate with h/t
Only people on the left believe this.
I suspect this was before they learned that Thiel would be speaking at the Republican Convention.
If I did this to someone I would go to jail.
If Gawker didn't want to go bankrupt, then maybe it shouldn't have illegally recorded and published a sex tape.
This is NOT just "poor taste shock journalism". Just like how setting up a hidden camera in a girl's high school locker room wouldn't just be "in poor taste".
To be fair the sex tape was recorded by Hulk's best friend and husband of the woman he was having sex with. They knew a tape was being made.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/12/media/hulk-hogan-gawker-sett...
> Bubba Clem could be heard on the full tape saying that if he ever wanted to retire, he simply needed to release the video.
Clem settled for $5,000.
In a different industry, ask Arthur Anderson about corporate capital punishment. Their ruling was vacated and they still died.
This statement is irrefutably true. However, the rest of your comment is either inaccurate factually or incorrect opinion. They didn't record the tape, and you are responding to my assertion that while they did wrong, the actual person who committed the "crime" (at lastly your analogy) settled for 5k vs. Gawkers 140m verdict. So, I find your argument to be a wholeheartedly emotional one, but not factual.
> The damages awarded to Mr. Bollea on Friday were compensatory: $55 million for economic harm and $60 million for emotional distress. (+$25M punitive)
The numbers are nonsense (who has $60M worth of feelings?), but there you go.
Bollea's net worth, at it's peak, was $25M, and is now estimated at $8M - though most of that has been stripped by divorce, before any of this happened.
I am not sure how someone whose likely career income didn't reach $50M can now, in retirement, state that he suffered $50M in purely economic damages from this (remember, the emotional damage is separate, as is the punitive) - from what? Residuals on old WWF repeats? (Edit: he would still be entitled to these). The occasional celebrity endorsement?
I can't see any realistic justification that his earning power for the rest of his life would total $55M, let alone that $55M only covers the fraction of his income that he _lost_ because of this.
It stinks. About as much as Denton does.
Not the case here at all. Especially since, if kim kardashian is any indication, people in and attached to sex tapes profit significantly[0].
0. Semi Joke.
It would include potential losses as well. His net worth is irrelevant.
So in retirement, no longer a public figure, aged 62, I have no idea how he can credibly argue he potentially lost $55M in income because of this. That he somehow "potentially" had $4M a year until his death (based on median age of death) of endorsements go up in smoke strains credibility. That seems to me to be some definite creative accounting that might be appealed.
+1. I feel like supporters of this decision are not really thinking about the numbers and would feel the same whether it was $1M , $10M, or $500M. The numbers are a pretty big part of this story though. I wonder what the largest emotional distress claim ever paid is. Hulk Hogan's distress is not more valuable because he is a celebrity.
I also find the economic damages highly suspect. The defense was not allowed to show the video of Hogan using racial slurs that Gawker also published, which probably hurt his celebrity status more than the sex tape.
This is the most ruthless revenge story ever, not least because it was all legal...
Thiel seems like a nerdy and curious fellow -- almost gentle, if he weren't so opinionated. But I guess everyone now knows not to mess with him.
This was in the context of the sentiment after 9/11.
Unfortunately it later turns out the government with its god-like power of 'infinite money' decided to do both at the same time, which explains his disgust at the NSA post-Snowden.
Surely a giant database in the sky could never fall into enemy hands with data transfer and data medium densities growing exponentially.
In the future, wars shall be lost because some dork left a usb drive on a train somewhere.
(a) Settle and get home loan relief and other measures in place immediately for struggling families.
(b) Engage in possibly a decade long, expensive fight that they might not be able to win.
When you try to fix a drug addicts problem, you don't just fix the symptom, but also must fix the cause. It's not too dissimilar for societal problems imho.
Just Google "arrested for ponzi fraud' ...tons of results. Alan Stanford..another one. High profile and wealthy are not immune to the long arm of justice. Martin Shkreli (pending)..Bernard Ebbers..Andrew Fastow ..many more