In a blog piece titled “A hard peace,” Gawker founder Nick Denton said that after four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge, the saga is finally over and a settlement has been reached.
Despite saying that they were all confident that the Florida appeals court would reduce or eliminate the $140 million judgment, Denton wrote that the legal war with Peter Thiel, the man who funded Hogan’s legal battle, would have cost way too much and hurt too many people. Thiel had publicly supported Hogan and said he would support him until his final victory, with Denton noting that with those words, “Gawker’s nemesis was not going away” until the never-ending lawsuit was over.
“It’s a shame the Hogan trial took place without the motives of the plaintiff’s backer being known. If there is a lasting legacy from this experience, it should be a new awareness of the danger of dark money in litigation finance,” Denton wrote. “And that’s surely in the spirit of the transparency Gawker was founded to promote. As for Peter Thiel himself, he is now for a wider group of people to contemplate.”
