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Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

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Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#41

Post by Ping938 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #36
Ping938 wrote: post #3

Funny thing is Gawker gave secret $200K Loan to Nick Denton before bankruptcy.

Secret? Gawker is private. My private employer doesn't disclose employee loans, why should any other?

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”

http://www.businessinsider.com/hulk-hogan-gawker-made-secret...

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#42

Post by chii »

threeseed wrote: post #29
dboreham wrote: post #21

Ok but...meanwhile on Wall St. individuals can't be held accountable for corporate actions.

They could have been held accountable. But the government had to make a choice. (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.

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.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#43

Post by joering2 »

Dobbs wrote: post #15
vonklaus wrote: post #7

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, Gawke…

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.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#44

Post by ambicapter »

fatbird wrote: post #11
serge2k wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fuck Peter Theil if he thinks setting a precedent like this is net good for anything other than his petty vendetta 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.

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.

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?

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#45

Post by redthrowaway »

gohrt wrote: post #26
redthrowaway wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#46

Post by bmm6o »

redthrowaway wrote: post #10
vonklaus wrote: post #7

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, Gawke…

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 a…

Not sure where this "darling of the left" thing is coming from. Disliking both Gawker and Thiel is one thing that can unite us all.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#47

Post by vonklaus »

stale2002 wrote: post #12
vonklaus wrote: post #7

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, Gawke…

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".

> 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.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#48

Post by protomyth »

takeda wrote: post #28
stale2002 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think the problem is that this amount of money will bankrupt gawker so technically is equal to capital punishment for the company?

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.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#49

Post by redthrowaway »

bmm6o wrote: post #46
redthrowaway wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Not sure where this "darling of the left" thing is coming from. Disliking both Gawker and Thiel is one thing that can unite us all.

> Disliking both Gawker and Thiel is one thing that can unite us all.

Speak for yourself. I've nothing but respect for Thiel.

Re: Gawker Can’t Shield Founder from Hulk Hogan Sex-Tape Verdict

#50

Post by vonklaus »

FireBeyond wrote: post #35
gohrt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/business/media/gawker-hulk... > 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, a…

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].

0. Semi Joke.

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