Including:
- free press
- free speech
- the right to privacy
- appeals
For detail, there's this item from the New Yorker's general counsel:
- The Stakes in Hulk Hogan’s Gawker Lawsuit.
On Monday afternoon, a Florida jury added twenty-five million dollars in punitive damages to the hundred and fifteen million dollars it had awarded Hulk Hogan, on Friday, in his invasion-of-privacy case against Gawker Media. Hogan sued Gawker for posting portions of a sex tape it received from an anonymous sender. It’s a shocking amount, not least because it’s forty million dollars more than Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bollea) had demanded.
Verdicts of this size can pose an existential risk to a media company. Gawker has reported that it earned forty-four million dollars in revenue in 2014, and in January Gawker’s owner, Nick Denton, announced that he had sold a portion of his company to investors in order to fund this case. Gawker will certainly appeal the verdict, as it should (after it pays a bond of up to fifty million dollars), arguing that the jury was unreasonable in finding that Hogan’s right to privacy outweighed Gawker’s right to publish the material, which it believed was of public interest. The publication of a videotape of consensual sex between adults is not the most appealing place to plant a First Amendment flag. But it is worth considering the possible effects on publishers if a judgment of this magnitude is allowed to stand.
There appears to be something of a consensus that the jury decision will be overturned on appeal - specifically by an appellate court that does not have the same dislike of the media that a trial jury might have. Hogan claims the tape humiliated him, but he has been up front about details of his sex life before,plus he is a public person. He has less of a claim to privacy than other who are not in the spotlight have. The right to publish newsworthy content seems to generally trump the right to privacy. And there is the complicating factor regarding the impact the decision might have on press on the internet.
For more:
- Jury awards Hulk Hogan $115 million as Gawker looks to appeal.
- Gawker to Appeal Verdict Awarding Hulk Hogan $115 Million.
- Here's Why the Gawker Verdict Should Be—and Likely Will Be—Overturned.
- Trial judge in Hulk Hogan-Gawker case is most reversed in Pinellas.
Here are previous court rulings concerning the question of Hogan's privacy.
- Bollea v. Gawker.
- Gawker v Bollea.
