ST. PETERSBURG — A Pinellas County judge on Wednesday denied Gawker Media's motion for a new trial and upheld the staggering $140 million in damages a jury awarded to former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan earlier this year.
The decision from Circuit Judge Pamela A.M. Campbell is the first step in what will likely be a lengthy appeals process. From the beginning of the trial, Gawker's attorneys said they anticipated having to seek relief from an appellate court that has the power to reverse or reduce the jury's award.
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Wednesday's hearing was overshadowed by recent reports that Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, has had outside help with his legal bills. Forbes reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources, that Peter Thiel, a PayPal cofounder and early investor in Facebook, "played a lead role" in secretly bankrolling Bollea's lawsuit against Gawker.
Bollea's attorneys refused to discuss Thiel's involvement in the case, but the Silicon Valley billionaire told The New York Times and he had spent roughly $10 million on the lawsuit so far.
Thiel has not been timid about his dislike for Gawker. In 2007, the now-defunct website Valleywag, which was owned by Gawker, publicly outed him before he was open about being gay.
"It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence," he told The New York Times. "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."
"We don't know whether Mr. Thiel is just paying for the defense. We don't know if Mr. Thiel is promising Mr. Bollea some amount of money ... we'd like to get the bottom of it," said Gawker attorney Seth Berlin.
But Berlin's request for the judge's permission to investigate the money behind Bollea's lawsuits — there are now two against Gawker — went unheard. When Berlin tried to hand Campbell copies of news reports about Thiel's involvement, the judge wouldn't accept them.
"I don't like looking at all the stuff that's published out there," Campbell said. "It's not healthy."
Bollea sued Gawker for the first time in 2012, after the website posted a one minute and 41 second video of the retired wrestler having sex with the wife of his former best friend, Tampa DJ Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Claiming that his privacy had been violated, Bollea took the case to trial, where after two weeks a jury ordered Gawker, its CEO Nick Denton, and former editor AJ Daulerio, to pay Bollea $140.1 million.
The scale of the award stunned legal observers, many of whom predicted it will likely be reduced. The total award included $115 million in compensatory damages and another $25.1 million in punitive damages.
Arguing that the figure was "out of whack," with other legal precedents, Berlin said the jury's award was "borne out of passion and prejudice."
Awards such as that appear only in Florida cases involving tobacco companies worth billions of dollars, he said. While Bollea may have suffered embarrassment, in some of those cases, the plaintiff lost his life.
Gawker's attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the jury's $60 million award for "garden-variety emotional distress" should be reduced to no more than $100,000. They said the economic damages, which jurors calculated at roughly $55 million, were really worth about $525,000.
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Explore all your options"There's nothing unreasonable or irrational about the damages awarded," said Bollea attorney Shane Vogt.
Gawker's edit of Bollea's grainy sex tape was viewed by some 2.5 million people before the website's editors took it down in April 2013, a little more than six months after it was posted. Another 5.4 million people visited the web page on which it appeared.
Comparing the award to other cases was unfair, Vogt said, because Bollea's experience was uniquely traumatizing.
"There is no case like this one," he said.
The judge's decision not to reduce the award means that Gawker may have to post a $50 million bond. Under Florida law, defendants must pay the full amount of the verdict, but there is a $50 million cap.
Attorneys for Bollea said that, at a minimum, they will seek a bond of that amount from each of the three defendants. They have also asked the judge to allow them to dig further into Gawker Media's finances, part of an effort to challenge the company's stated net worth of $83 million, which Bollea's attorneys is artificially low.
For its part, Gawker plans to ask for a reduced bond.
"We look forward to the legal process continuing and expect to be vindicated," the company said in a statement.
Contact Anna M. Phillips at aphillips@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3354. Follow @annamphillips.