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Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

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Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#481

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #359
grellas wrote: post #278

A few thoughts: 1. The pressure point here was a court ruling declining to stay enforcement of the $140M judgment pending appeal. This left Gawker having to post a $50M bond in order to avoid enforcement proceedings by which its assets could have been seized and its business literally dismantled. Gawker may or may not ultimately prove to have a successful basis upon which to get this judgment reversed but, without a…

If we took a wider interpretation of maintenance as a crime would it imply that we should forbid lawyers from taking on cases on a contingency basis? Or does the representation automatically factor in there interest in the merits? (they certainly care, they don't get paid if they fail). And Thiel certainly has an issue with Gawker, having been victimized in exactly the same way (revealing of otherwise personal inform…

[deleted]

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#482

Post by johnpowell »

smt88 wrote: post #231
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American and I've only heard a muckraker described as number 2.

ProPublica, one of my favorite investigative news sources, describes some of their articles as "muckreads". They use the word proudly, with the implication that they've gone to lengths that the general public would/could not to find out important information. As someone said, it was a pejorative term that was reclaimed, and that makes a lot of sense to me now.

Talking Points Memo does the same.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#483

Post by unclebucknasty »

SilasX wrote: post #396
jacquesm wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(3) is proof positive the absence or presence of funds has too much influence on the outcome of court cases. If all that stands between a judgment one way or the other is a pile of cash then effectively there is no such thing as justice and this means that more often than not the party with the smallest bank account will lose. I'm fine with the concept of 'maintenance' but at the same time I feel that there is such a…

Exactly -- the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence. Asking how to "keep people from spending money on lawyers" is the wrong approach; the system's process needs to be robust against such asymmetric investment. [1] People forget that proper civil litigation is a public good (in the economic sense). Ensuring that (civil) wrongdoers pay for their actio…

>"it should take an exponential investment to produce a linear impact on the award"

I'm not sure how we would manage that but, assuming we could, doesn't this cut both ways? As long as money is in the equation, then don't all parties still benefit by having as much money as possible?

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#484

Post by gwildor »

manish_gill wrote: post #451
whack wrote: post #54

Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy. By building an entire business model around such practices, Gawker is not only spreading disinformation, it is also crowding out more reputable news sources that could have better helped inform the public. The only criticism I can give in this entire tale, is that it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers. Such re…

> Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy. You seem to not understand what freedom of speech means. As someone who actually lives in a place where people use libel and slander laws to sue people left and right and get offended, consequence being censorships and a tightening of restrictions on speech, I'd kill to have the kind of freedom Gawker did.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#485

Post by jacquesm »

rayiner wrote: post #462
jacquesm wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result. And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. I do…

> And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. I'm just cautioning extrapolating from that, to the conclusion that the party with more money wins the lawsuit. That's only true up to a certain baseline. > And that's just civil proceedings, in criminal proceedings the odds are stacked even worse against a defendant without funds. Maybe. The DOJ's co…

> That's only true up to a certain baseline.

And that's true enough for me.

> Maybe. The DOJ's conviction rate isn't appreciably different between divisions, including white collar crime: > (all around 90%).

Interesting report, thank you for the link. I think 90% in and of itself is high enough to warrant scrutiny, any higher and it would be grounds for an investigation. Japan (99%) and China (98%) appear to be significantly higher still but many other first world countries are significantly below that (the UK for instance at 74%).

Surprising too that in the 1970's the US was at 72%, 18% more convictions in such a short period should be another cause for worry, either in the past people were more likely to walk when guilty, or in the present a lot of people that aren't guilty end up in jail. (Or, alternatively, a lot more stuff that is easy to prosecute got added to the list of offenses but that would have to be an immense number to skew the totals from 72% to 90%.)

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#486

Post by jacquesm »

pron wrote: post #472
jacquesm wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result. And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. I do…

> The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. But that's not what happened. The case was "decided in his favor" a long time ago when Gawker offered to settle for a sum of money that would far exceed anything he could have expected in his wildest d…

That's wrong on quite a few levels, thank you for that insight, I did not fully appreciate the details. As much as I dislike Gawker that's a personal vendetta fought through the justice system and a third-party's lawsuit on top of that.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#487

Post by thaumasiotes »

j2kun wrote: post #454
RickHull wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Thiel arguably has "connection with the merits of the dispute". He feels that Gawker violated his privacy as well as Hogan's, and he wants Gawker to be punished and/or discouraged from further similar behavior. Just like the EFF or ACLU.

Just curious: aside from historical precedent, what objective "connection with the merits of the dispute" makes the ACLU more appropriate than Thiel to fund a privacy suit? Is it just that the ACLU has trained lawyers who can weigh in on the law? Would the attitude toward Thiel change if Thiel happened to have a law degree? Would it change for the ACLU if they were purely funding it and not actually providing lawyers…

> Would it change for the ACLU if they were purely funding it and not actually providing lawyers?

This is an interesting one. If the answer is "yes", then donating to the ACLU should itself be criminalized.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#488

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #462
jacquesm wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result. And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. I do…

> And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. I'm just cautioning extrapolating from that, to the conclusion that the party with more money wins the lawsuit. That's only true up to a certain baseline. > And that's just civil proceedings, in criminal proceedings the odds are stacked even worse against a defendant without funds. Maybe. The DOJ's co…

> The DOJ's conviction rate isn't appreciably different between divisions

Conviction rate doesn't tell you how much the deck is stacked against defendants, it tells you how good the prosecuting agency is at assessing its ability to secure a conviction before initiating formal charges.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#489

Post by SilasX »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #483
SilasX wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly -- the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence. Asking how to "keep people from spending money on lawyers" is the wrong approach; the system's process needs to be robust against such asymmetric investment. [1] People forget that proper civil litigation is a public good (in the economic sense). Ensuring that (civil) wrongdoers pay for their actio…

> "it should take an exponential investment to produce a linear impact on the award" I'm not sure how we would manage that but, assuming we could, doesn't this cut both ways? As long as money is in the equation, then don't all parties still benefit by having as much money as possible?

No, because (under the condition I described), the size of the award increases much slower than the investment, so it quickly becomes a losing proposition; the gain in award is exceeded by the loss in expenditures (assuming the bounds on legal costs awarded are bounded by a slower function).

Under that condition, each doubling of the amount spent on influencing the outcome (via payments expert witnesses, bribes to the judge, discovery, etc) would only yield the same gain in revenues from the court. So for example, if you start with $1000, then doubling to $2000 might yield $1500, doubling to $2000 with only yield $1500 more on top of that, and so on.

(I agree an exponential difference might be two hard; I'd be happy for even a quadratic difference!)

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#490

Post by slavik81 »

Clanan wrote: post #397
grellas wrote: post #278

A few thoughts: 1. The pressure point here was a court ruling declining to stay enforcement of the $140M judgment pending appeal. This left Gawker having to post a $50M bond in order to avoid enforcement proceedings by which its assets could have been seized and its business literally dismantled. Gawker may or may not ultimately prove to have a successful basis upon which to get this judgment reversed but, without a…

Like many things in politics and law, forming one's opinion must include considering a reverse situation - what if a wealthy individual funded the successful litigation of a "positive" entity? e.g. Bill Gates funding the destruction of the EFF (assuming someone had a case). I was taught to do this in political classes (based on James Madison's discussion of factions), and it can have such a huge impact on motives and…

The idea of your technique is good, but I think you've left out important details and it has affected your analysis. Gawker was bankrupted not by the actual costs of defending themselves, but by the cost of a judgement against them.

If your assumptions are that Bollea's was a legitimate victim of Gawker's actions, and that we would need to protect the EFF from a similar outcome, it seems to be that what you're saying is that we need to prevent victims from winning court cases because the perpetrators who harmed them might be otherwise good people.

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