It’s been a good week for Hulk Hogan in court. As previously noted, Judge Pamela Campbell in Florida denied Gawker’s motion for a retrial and to have the verdict reduced this week. According to the New York Times, Gawker argued that Hulk Hogan’s sealed racist comments should have been made available to the jury, and that the jurors had been tainted.
Hulk Hogan’s secret financial backer was revealed this week to be Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal who was outed as homosexual by Gawker. The Times reports that Gawker argued that Thiel was new discovery material, but the judge refused to look at articles involving his involvement. Thiel reportedly put up $10 million for Hogan’s legal team to work on the case, and has held a grudge against Gawker for outing him in a 2007 article titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people”
Thiel told the Times this isn’t about revenge, but a way to stop Gawker from “bullying” people.
“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Thiel told the New York Times this week, after it was revealed that he was funding Hogan’s case. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest. Even someone like Terry Bollea who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn’t quite have the resources to do this alone.”
After the news broke, Gawker CEO Nick Denton penned an open letter to Thiel on his website, saying that Thiel’s “revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously.”
“You [Thiel] admit you have been planning the punishment of Gawker and its writers for years, and that you have so far spent $10 million to fund litigation against the company,” Denton wrote. “Charles Harder, the Hollywood plaintiff’s lawyer who has marshaled your legal campaign, is representing not just the wrestler Hulk Hogan on your behalf, but two other subjects of stories in suits against Gawker and its editorial staff.”
