⚖️ Hulk Hogan won $140M against Gawker with Thiel's backing

A Florida jury awarded Hulk Hogan, legally Terry Bollea, $115 million on March 18, 2016, in his invasion-of-privacy suit against Gawker over a sex tape clip, The New York Times reported. The Times later reported that a further $25 million in punitive damages brought the total to $140 million. Gawker founder Nick Denton and former editor A.J. Daulerio were found personally liable. Denton said in a statement that key evidence and the most important witness had been improperly withheld from the jury, and that the company would appeal, the Guardian reported. A spokesperson for Hogan's legal team told the Guardian the verdict reflected "the public's disgust with the invasion of privacy disguised as journalism."

The backer the jury never met

What the jury did not know, the Times reported on May 25, 2016, was that Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, was paying for the case. In his first interview on the subject, Thiel told the paper it was "less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," citing Gawker's coverage of his friends and others. He called an estimate of $10 million in expenses "roughly in the ballpark," and said he did not expect to make any money from it.

Then came the paperwork. In a June 10, 2016 filing, Gawker said it could not afford the $140.1 million judgment or the standard $50 million bond, and it filed for Chapter 11 the same day, Politico reported. The company said it still planned to appeal. Its balance sheet in the filing showed total assets of about $33.8 million. Thiel, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the news.

The sale followed. Univision won the auction with a $135 million bid for Gawker's seven sites, The Hollywood Reporter reported on August 16, 2016, citing a source familiar with the proceedings; a bankruptcy judge still had to approve it. The day before the auction, Thiel wrote in the Times that he was "proud to have contributed financial support to his case." Denton, the Reporter said, had painted Thiel as a billionaire bully.

Gawker spent years arguing that publishing was a public service. Thiel spent roughly $10 million, by his own estimate, arguing otherwise, and the filing shows whose argument ran out of cash first.