GAWKER MEDIA AUCTION TRIAL

Petersburg, Fla., circuit court.īollea’s lawsuit, possibly along with two others filed in the past year against Gawker, was secretly financed by billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who in May acknowledged that he was backing the lawsuit to retaliate against a now-defunct Gawker Media site, Valleywag, which reported that Thiel is gay and which also published critical articles about Thiel and his associates.ĭenton has maintained that the initial Valleywag article was accurate, that Thiel was already widely known to be gay, and that the billionaire was simply abusing his clout to sue a journalistic enterprise out of existence, and thereby undermine the First Amendment, because he didn’t like what it publishes.

GAWKER MEDIA AUCTION TRIAL

Daulerio over the October 2012 publication of a video of Bollea cavorting with the wife of a friend.īollea claimed the posting of 103-second edited version of a 30-minute video, nine seconds of which depicted actual sex, violated his privacy and publicity rights, and a jury agreed in March after a two-week trial in St. It will be up to the new owner whether or not to kill the flagship gossip site that has generated buzz and readership over the years, but had ultimately attracted catastrophic litigation from celebrity pro-wrestler and reality television star Terry Gene Bollea (Hogan’s real name) who sued Gawker, Denton and then-editor A.J. Ziff Davis stood to collect a $2.47 million breakup fee as part of its June agreement with Gawker Media. Univision’s sole rival for Gawker Media, Ziff Davis, the digital publishing and game company that had initially agreed to pay $90 million in June, dropped out of the bidding as the price increased. Univision, the Latino-oriented multimedia powerhouse, agreed to pay $135 million for Nick Denton’s Gawker Media Group in a grueling daylong private bankruptcy auction designed to protect Denton’s company from a Florida jury’s $140.1 million verdict in the Hulk Hogan lawsuit.

Gawker media auction