Comment by FireBeyond

23 days ago

Maybe his social media profiles at the time (public, because I'm not "friends" with him) shouldn't have included photos and posts about gay cruise ship vacations.

Or perhaps don't do business with people who would happily execute you? All that says to me is Thiel values money over anything else.

The insinuation that Gawker in any way shape or form "outed" him is just laughable.

Gawker is absolutely trash media, to be quite clear.

> and that goes for rich or poor

I do agree about this, for certain things - but in others, no - and indeed, courts have ruled that billionaires are inherently "public figures"... "due to their outsized influence on public affairs and opinion".

I also have significant issues with his bankrolling of Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker as an abomination of the legal system, including the right to face one's "accuser":

- Hogan had already agreed in principle to a part ownership stake and profits of Gawker.

- Lawyers paid for by Thiel pushed for him to drop that and push instead for bankrupting Gawker through damages (which were laughable, see below). (Hypothetical question, if you're an attorney, ostensibly representing Hogan, but you know the person paying your bills, Thiel, wants a different outcome for the case, when push comes to shove, whose interests are you going to represent? See the following point too).

- When the case and awarded damages -did- actually threaten to bankrupt Gawker, Thiel/Hogan's lawyers did the most illogical thing possible, if they were looking to recoup any money for their ostensible client... they dropped the one claim against Gawker that would have allowed their liability insurance to at least partially pay out.

(Re damages: The amount that Hogan had originally asked for seemed reasonable. Then after Thiel's lawyers got involved, the amount asked for was multiplied five thousand times.

This included economic damages of fifty million dollars. For a man who had made something in the order of $10-15M his entire career? Who had a net worth at its peak of $30M, and at the time of the lawsuit of $8M? I highly doubt that TV stations pulling reruns of old WWF events, lost hair commercial and other endorsements was worth that. (They separately asked for emotional damages, too, to be clear. But there was near zero justification for this economic damages claim.)