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'I am troubled by Thiel,' Professor Simon said. More from the New York Times : Peter Thiel Is Said to Bankroll Hulk Hogan's Suit Against Gawker Gawker Founder Suspects a Common Financer BehindLawsuits In Silicon Valley, Gossip, Anger and Revengeīut he said there was a risk when a lawsuit was funded by a single person with a potential agenda. Simon, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at Hofstra University School of Law, suggested that the practice has helped 'level the playing field' by providing resources for people to mount cases against big institutions that would be impossible otherwise.

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Bollea's case as well as others has raised a series of new questions about the First Amendment as well as about the role of big money in the court system - specifically the emerging field of litigation finance, in which third parties like hedge funds and investment firms pay for other people's lawsuits. One of my friends convinced me that if I didn't do something, nobody would.' 'I thought it would do more harm to me than good. 'I didn't really want to do anything,' he said. Thiel said that he had decided several years ago to set in motion a plan to secretly fund multiple cases to try to cripple Gawker. He said that 'even someone like Terry Bollea who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn't quite have the resources to do this alone.' They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can't defend themselves. Most of the people they attack are not people in my category. Thiel said that Gawker published articles that were 'very painful and paralyzing for people who were targeted.' He said, 'I thought it was worth fighting back.' '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.' 'It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,' he said in his first interview since his identity was revealed. Thiel to mount a clandestine war against Gawker, funding a team of lawyers to find and help 'victims' of the company's coverage to mount cases against Gawker.

Hogan had a secret benefactor paying for the lawsuit, to the tune of about $10 million: Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook.Ī 2007 article published by Gawker, 'Peter Thiel is totally gay, people,' and a series of articles about his friends and others that he said 'ruined people's lives for no reason' drove Mr. What the jury did not know - nor the public - was that Mr.

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