"Gawker must be destroyed" was the original title of my new essay on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, just posted on The American Prospect. The actual title, provided by my editor, is "The Gawker Case Has Become More Interesting." The piece is a long-form review of Ryan Holiday's new book about the case, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue. Here is the gist:
When Hulk Hogan sued Gawker Media for invasion of privacy, it first seemed like a battle of loudmouths, with nothing much at stake other than entertainment value. Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) was a retired professional wrestler who had become famous for flexing his muscles in center-ring, shredding his ripped tee-shirt, and occasionally touting his sexual abilities in promotions and interviews. Gawker.com was a gossip heavy and highly profitable website—among several others operated by Gawker Media—best known for a prurient obsession with celebrities and willingness to publish almost anything that would attract clicks and page views.
The issue in the case was Gawker.com’s publication of a short clip from a secretly recorded video, in which Hogan was shown having sex with his best friend’s wife. The trial, which ended in March 2017, resulted in a staggering $140 million verdict against Gawker Media and its founder Nick Denton. Hogan eventually settled for $31 million, and Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy, which appeared to be the end of the matter. There was a lot more to it than that, however, as Holiday explains in profound detail. More than just a courtroom soap opera, Bollea v. Gawker Media provides significant insights about the role of financial power in litigation and, not coincidentally, the legal ethics of Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder.
Two months after the Gawker verdict, The New York Times reported that the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, had financed Hogan’s lawsuit to the tune of over $10 million. Thiel, the most prominent Trump supporter in Silicon Valley, had been enraged at Gawker Media since 2007, when he was outed as gay by Gawker’s technology gossip site Valleywag. Thiel referred to his financing of Hogan’s lawsuit as "one of my greater philanthropic things that I've done," but many people would simply call it retribution. Holiday is non-judgmental. He calls it a “conspiracy,” which to him is not a pejorative. “When it comes to conspiracies, there are good ones and terrible ones and complicated ones.” In this case, he leaves it to his readers to decide.
You can read the entire essay here.
Gee Whiz. It all boils down to this: "Hulk, while we are representing you, do yo mind if we screw Gawker too?" "Your pickle is out of the bag, so what the hell, right?" I'll bet he would have gone along with it. Seems simple to me. In my three bill retail theft world, if an attorney is attempting to overturn or challenge the constitutionality of a statute, and the State offers to dismiss the case, the client has a right to know that… What were these guys thinking?
Really interesting article, especially the ethical questions at the end. I might use it when I teach professional responsibility in the spring.
^^^You can teach that article….as long as you teach the basics as I see it: !. Clients nor employees are bed partners. 2. Don't steal from clients. That would include "milking or churning the file" and outright theft. 3. And for heaven's sake, show up for a client's court dates… Ethics is not complicated.