“Gawker’s strongest argument was that Hulk had in fact consented to the public disclosure of the sex tape by his actions but evidence supporting that defense was not the centerpiece of the trial. “The reversal of the verdict on appeal was far from likely,” Sanford said. The resolution was of absolutely no surprise to experts in the field, who have mostly been involved with old-line media firms in defamation and invasion of privacy disputes.Įven though the press often loses at trial but wins on appeal, there was significant risk in pursuing an appeal, spending huge sums of money against a plaintiff funded by billionaire Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and possibly losing.īruce Sanford, a prominent media lawyer at Washington’s Baker & Hostetler, says, the settlement is not unexpected and preferable over costly litigation with an uncertain outcome. The money for the settlement came from the sale of Gawker Media to Univision and will be paid from the Gawker estate. He discussed the decision to settle in a note titled, “A hard peace,” which opened, “After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. In the end, proudly iconoclastic Gawker Media and founder Nick Denton raised a white flag.Ī new media renegade behaved very much its traditional forebears when it announced plans to scrap a long and costly appeal of Hulk Hogan’s $140 million victory in the dispute over its publishing an excerpt of a sex tape.ĭenton formally disclosed an out-of-court, $32 million settlement which ends related litigation involving Gawker journalists.
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