Retired wrestler Hulk Hogan was recently awarded $115 million after winning a lawsuit against Gawker, according to BuzzFeed News. Hogan had sued the website for publication of a sex tape of Hogan and his best friend’s wife back in 2012.
Originally, he asked for $100 million in the lawsuit. He was suing on the basis of publishing the tape without his consent and for causing him “severe emotional distress.” According to Hogan, the release of the clip has “turned his world upside down” and he and his family are “torn.” He additionally claims that he was unaware that the act was being filmed at the time of the encounter.
Despite the upset that Hogan has expressed about the release of the tape and his denial of knowledge of the encounter being filmed, Gawker’s lawyer continue to show disbelief towards his ignorance and regret of the event. Michael Sullivan, the lawyer, questioned whether this whole thing was “just another antic between best friends,” implying that Hogan was well aware that the he was being filmed.
While $115 million would break the bank for most of us, Gawker founder Nick Denton claims that they are “generally rather relaxed and confident about [their] financial position.” Hogan’s lawyers stated in court that Gawker posted the sex tape solely for reasons of “power and profit” and to “virally market their website.” While it was super slimy of them to do, it wasn’t a bad marketing strategy for Gawker, and it fit right in with the anything-goes mentality the site had at the time.
As stated in the The New York Times, Hogan’s lawyers have claimed the publication to be a “gratuitous invasion of privacy.” However, in Gawker claims that it was within their Constitutional rights to publish the clip and that Hogan had given up his right to privacy by “talking often about in public about his sex life.”
The trial is not yet officially concluded and it is entirely possible that Hogan’s compensation may rise even higher before the trial comes to a close. Additionally, Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University of Buffalo, told the Times that the verdict “could have a profound impact on privacy rights and also free press rights in the United States.” Basically, the court’s deciding what’s newsworthy and what’s private—and that could have a big effect on what just about anyone publishing stuff on the internet is allowed to do in the future.