7 ms·

This is a poorly thought out argument. He isn't doing anything under-handed or illegal to destroy Gawker. He isn't fabricating evidence against them or paying o

by darawk 10y ago

This is a poorly thought out argument. He isn't doing anything under-handed or illegal to destroy Gawker. He isn't fabricating evidence against them or paying off cops. He's simply financing a non-spurious lawsuit, which the courts have decided was legitimate. This is exactly what I want the billionaires in our society doing. He may be acting in his own self-interest, but it also happened to align with the public interest. And if the courts had decided against Hogan, it all would have been for nothing. There is no grand problem here. He isn't "destroying publications he wishes to silence", he's augmenting the resources of someone with a legitimate legal claim against the newspaper. If you are putting forth the argument that merely financing a lawsuit is a corruption of the public trust, then we have much more serious problems with our legal system than Peter Thiel having it out for Gawker. Anyone should be able to fund any lawsuit that they want, and then the courts will decide if that lawsuit has merit. That's why we have courts in the first place.

dopamean 10y ago
> but it also happened to align with the public interest. That is debatable and also the problem. What if it didn't align with the public interest? Is it ok then?
- darawk 10y ago
  Yes. It is always ok to finance a lawsuit. The premise of our legal system is that optimal adversaries debating in front of an impartial judge produce the best possible outcome. If Hogan wasn't able to finance the lawsuit on his own, that would be the perversion of justice. But if our court system operates as it should, and there is no indication to my knowledge that it has not in this case, then billionaires funding legal teams should only enhance the level of justice available to all. If the above is not true, then that is a problem with the court system, not a problem with people funding each other's lawsuits.
  - zardgiv 10y ago
    It's not to say that this is what happened here, but our legal system disagrees that it's always OK to finance a lawsuit (see SLAPP).
    - eudox 10y ago
      Certainly, but a characteristic of SLAPP is the plaintiff hasn't got a solid case, their purpose is to drag legal procedures long enough to bankrupt their target. Hulk Hogan won this lawsuit fair and square.
      - zardgiv 10y ago
        Of course, I was merely addressing the claim that it's always OK to fund lawsuits.
    - pkinsky 10y ago
      That is not true. Our legal system views some lawsuits as themselves being illegitimate attempts to silence people by forcing them to defend against frivolous, meritless lawsuits (see SLAPP). It does not view lawsuits as SLAPP-worthy merely because based on who's paying the bill.
  - saint_fiasco 10y ago
    Spending lots of money on lawsuits has the effect of increasing the demand on lawyers (making them more expensive for other people) and courts (making them more slow for other cases). The resources the justice system spent chasing Thiel's personal vendetta could have been used for cases other people think are more important. That's why other people complain about it.
capkutay 10y ago
Basically any influence by 'extremely wealthy' is automatically viewed as an attack on 'freedom'. It's a straw-man political argument.
- c3534l 10y ago
  I think the influence that money has on our judicial system is a big concern. The threat of frivolous legal action has a very real chilling effect on freedom of speech. The legal system in the US disproportionately favors the wealthy and this is a legitimate concern. I think that in this case Thiel is warranted here, but no I don't like that wealthy people get to sue people to get their way. The costs of litigation should be minimal and the outcome unbiased by money. However, that's not the case and it's a travesty. I don't think this is simply a case of hatred for the "extremely wealthy."
- elevenfist 10y ago
  No one gave him the authority to control speech. He has money, but we didn't give him the authority to do this. I honestly hope you are wealthy and this viewpoint supports some sort of authoritarian self-interest. Or you're not American I guess.
  - abiox 10y ago
    he isn't "controlling speech". the courts are, by rendering judgement on whether gawker did something that warrants some penalty.
    - shawn-furyan 10y ago
      Man hours have a direct impact in court cases. Therefore money is a thumb on the scales of justice.
      - abiox 10y ago
        this is (if i take "man hours" to mean resources spent on case preparation) an emergent property of for-profit mercenary lawyering. that being said, sometimes the thumb is doing good work - or at least, doing necessary work in pursuing positive outcomes.
lazaroclapp 10y ago
I don't know enough about the case at hand to comment specifically, but arguing that it is always fair to use "augmenting the resources of someone with a legitimate legal claim" as a tactic is not uncontroversial in the general case. Keep in mind that selectively punishing common legal violations is a common censorship tactic in many places. Consider this case in Mexico: "On 12 March 2015, two journalists from MVS, Daniel Lizárraga and Irving Huerta, were fired after they used the station's brand name without permission in a newly-created website known as MexicoLeaks, which leaked reports on government corruption" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Aristegui#Second_firing_from_MVS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Aristegui#Second_firing... The legal case, of course, focused on "used the station's brand name without permission". But the actual reason for their dismissal was "a newly-created website known as MexicoLeaks, which leaked reports on government corruption". Now, I am not saying the Gawker case is or isn't appropriate, but the intent of the parties matters, if not legally, then morally. When you are using a lawsuit, not to redress a wrong, but to attack a rival, the fact that the letter of the law is on your side doesn't make your actions ethical. This is specially true for governments, but there is no reason why it might not true for individuals as well (wealthy or not).
- argonaut 10y ago
  But what's the solution to this problem? Ban wealthy people from financing lawsuits? That's never going to happen. What about ban people with malicious intent from financing the lawsuits? You'll rarely be able to prove the intent.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    We formerly had laws on the books banning this very thing.. Read into champerty: http://qz.com/692312/billionaire-peter-thiels-attack-on-gawker-is-called-champerty-and-it-used-to-be-illegal/ http://qz.com/692312/billionaire-peter-thiels-attack-on-gawk...
nikcub 10y ago
He isn't only funding lawsuits - but is asking to be judged by the standard of a philanthropist who supports libertarian values, freedom of the press and justifies his actions against Gawker as so. That part is clearly bullshit.
cft 10y ago
The problem with this argument that this is asymmetric. Most ordinary people will not have problems like Peter Thiel had, since outing them has no entertainment value. This is sort of a rich-only problem. Most ordinary people have problems like being screwed by their health insurance (denied claims), bank, some other big company, etc. I had for example a case when my business accounts got suddenly frozen by Wells Fargo for "unauthorized access". They would not tell me who accessed them, what IP, any specifics. I had to renumber all 10 of my personal and business accounts (huge problem for a business with receivables and ETFs), and in the process they lost all transaction history which created a huge accounting burden. When I expressed concerns, they addressed me to their "legal department", that employs a couple of hundred lawyers full time. Would Peter Thiel fund this?
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  I'm certainly not rich or famous in any stretch of the imagination, yet Gawker felt inclined to personally slander me multiple times. So implying that only folks like Thiel have a reason in stopping the bullying that they do isn't accurate.
knowtheory 10y ago
Given that our courts are publicly funded and have limited bandwidth and throughput, your suggested solution faces serious resource constraints. Additionally, Thiel is altering the normal course of how these cases would have gone and specifically notes that here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-th... It's one thing to say that funding a lawsuit is fine, and another thing to say that its fine to target an organization to ensure that every grievance against them does not settle out of court and goes to trial.
tardos 10y ago
He is very much doing something under-handed to destroy Gawker. Gawker owns insurance to decouple financial harm from existential harm in the case of lawsuits like these. The civil system expects that victims who are harmed will try to maximize expected payout in case of a suit. If Hulk's legal case is indeed robust, he should have included every possible harm in the suit to maximize his payout. The decision to structure the suit in a way that excludes Gawker's insurance coverage is an under-handed technique which turns a civil suit into an indirect tactic to destroy Gawker. It is underhanded because, at the very least, it violates an expected principle of the civil suit system. This signals that the goal of the suit is not to compensate Hulk for damages, but to put Gawker out of business.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Right, exactly - question is how aware of this was Hogan? If he was aware, it's still not great. If he wasn't, that raises significant questions about SLAPP from Thiel, if not malpractice from his lawyers (whose direction are they fallowing, their apparent client, or his financier?).
- willvarfar 10y ago
  If a lawyer explained such a choice to me I'd likely choose to take the insurer out of the picture too. Principles.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    "Your Honor, the actions of Gawker caused emotional distress and irreparable damage to the earnings capability of my client, and thus we seek an award to compensate him for this loss." "Your Honor, we are dropping this claim here, but keeping all the rest intact." "You realize that this means the defendant will have little to no ability to compensate you for the damages you claimed and sought and stated caused you duress?" "... Yes... Your Honor." If you state it's about compensation for lost potential earnings, and such, and say you need to be made whole, then waive away a large part of your practical ability to be made whole, at what point does that become disingenuous?
- 10y ago
rhizome 10y ago
If you are putting forth the argument that merely financing a lawsuit is a corruption of the public trust, then we have much more serious problems with our legal system than Peter Thiel having it out for Gawker Larger crimes don't excuse smaller ones, which is also known as the Fallacy of Relative Privation. I'm also having trouble figuring out (or even learning) what public interest is served by this result? Does a rich guy shutting down a publication enter into it at all? I think it does.
ojbyrne 10y ago
The moral problem I see with this, is that actually pursuing a lawsuit is so inordinately expensive, that someone like Hulk Hogan, who presumably earned some cash in his life, can't pursue it on his own.
NamTaf 10y ago
My issue is that by selectively choosing what he does and does not finance, he is influencing things in his personal favour. I would far prefer the bllionaires in our society financing a big pool of money that then indescriminately funds the 'little guy' against the big corporation, so that the bias of money is removed from our legal system. Instead, this current process of being able to selectively target lawsuits means that the rich can indeed influence things in a biased fashion via their money. I'm all for Thiel to have it out with Gawker, but should that not be on his own valid legal claims? By funding this lawsuit in particular, he's negatively impacting other suits by omission. Basically, if money can't be kept out of the legal system then the money shouldn't be able to selectively enter it either, because either result produces a bias of the optimal situation where two equally strong legal teams debate a case in front of an impartial judge on its merits.

by darawk 10y ago

dopamean 10y ago

> but it also happened to align with the public interest. That is debatable and also the problem. What if it didn't align with the public interest? Is it ok then?

darawk 10y ago
Yes. It is always ok to finance a lawsuit. The premise of our legal system is that optimal adversaries debating in front of an impartial judge produce the best possible outcome. If Hogan wasn't able to finance the lawsuit on his own, that would be the perversion of justice. But if our court system operates as it should, and there is no indication to my knowledge that it has not in this case, then billionaires funding legal teams should only enhance the level of justice available to all. If the above is not true, then that is a problem with the court system, not a problem with people funding each other's lawsuits.
- zardgiv 10y ago
  It's not to say that this is what happened here, but our legal system disagrees that it's always OK to finance a lawsuit (see SLAPP).
  - eudox 10y ago
    Certainly, but a characteristic of SLAPP is the plaintiff hasn't got a solid case, their purpose is to drag legal procedures long enough to bankrupt their target. Hulk Hogan won this lawsuit fair and square.
    - zardgiv 10y ago
      Of course, I was merely addressing the claim that it's always OK to fund lawsuits.
  - pkinsky 10y ago
    That is not true. Our legal system views some lawsuits as themselves being illegitimate attempts to silence people by forcing them to defend against frivolous, meritless lawsuits (see SLAPP). It does not view lawsuits as SLAPP-worthy merely because based on who's paying the bill.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  Spending lots of money on lawsuits has the effect of increasing the demand on lawyers (making them more expensive for other people) and courts (making them more slow for other cases). The resources the justice system spent chasing Thiel's personal vendetta could have been used for cases other people think are more important. That's why other people complain about it.

capkutay 10y ago

Basically any influence by 'extremely wealthy' is automatically viewed as an attack on 'freedom'. It's a straw-man political argument.

c3534l 10y ago
I think the influence that money has on our judicial system is a big concern. The threat of frivolous legal action has a very real chilling effect on freedom of speech. The legal system in the US disproportionately favors the wealthy and this is a legitimate concern. I think that in this case Thiel is warranted here, but no I don't like that wealthy people get to sue people to get their way. The costs of litigation should be minimal and the outcome unbiased by money. However, that's not the case and it's a travesty. I don't think this is simply a case of hatred for the "extremely wealthy."
elevenfist 10y ago
No one gave him the authority to control speech. He has money, but we didn't give him the authority to do this. I honestly hope you are wealthy and this viewpoint supports some sort of authoritarian self-interest. Or you're not American I guess.
- abiox 10y ago
  he isn't "controlling speech". the courts are, by rendering judgement on whether gawker did something that warrants some penalty.
  - shawn-furyan 10y ago
    Man hours have a direct impact in court cases. Therefore money is a thumb on the scales of justice.
    - abiox 10y ago
      this is (if i take "man hours" to mean resources spent on case preparation) an emergent property of for-profit mercenary lawyering. that being said, sometimes the thumb is doing good work - or at least, doing necessary work in pursuing positive outcomes.

lazaroclapp 10y ago

I don't know enough about the case at hand to comment specifically, but arguing that it is always fair to use "augmenting the resources of someone with a legitimate legal claim" as a tactic is not uncontroversial in the general case. Keep in mind that selectively punishing common legal violations is a common censorship tactic in many places. Consider this case in Mexico: "On 12 March 2015, two journalists from MVS, Daniel Lizárraga and Irving Huerta, were fired after they used the station's brand name without permission in a newly-created website known as MexicoLeaks, which leaked reports on government corruption" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Aristegui#Second_firing_from_MVS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Aristegui#Second_firing... The legal case, of course, focused on "used the station's brand name without permission". But the actual reason for their dismissal was "a newly-created website known as MexicoLeaks, which leaked reports on government corruption". Now, I am not saying the Gawker case is or isn't appropriate, but the intent of the parties matters, if not legally, then morally. When you are using a lawsuit, not to redress a wrong, but to attack a rival, the fact that the letter of the law is on your side doesn't make your actions ethical. This is specially true for governments, but there is no reason why it might not true for individuals as well (wealthy or not).

argonaut 10y ago
But what's the solution to this problem? Ban wealthy people from financing lawsuits? That's never going to happen. What about ban people with malicious intent from financing the lawsuits? You'll rarely be able to prove the intent.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  We formerly had laws on the books banning this very thing.. Read into champerty: http://qz.com/692312/billionaire-peter-thiels-attack-on-gawker-is-called-champerty-and-it-used-to-be-illegal/ http://qz.com/692312/billionaire-peter-thiels-attack-on-gawk...

nikcub 10y ago

He isn't only funding lawsuits - but is asking to be judged by the standard of a philanthropist who supports libertarian values, freedom of the press and justifies his actions against Gawker as so. That part is clearly bullshit.

cft 10y ago

The problem with this argument that this is asymmetric. Most ordinary people will not have problems like Peter Thiel had, since outing them has no entertainment value. This is sort of a rich-only problem. Most ordinary people have problems like being screwed by their health insurance (denied claims), bank, some other big company, etc. I had for example a case when my business accounts got suddenly frozen by Wells Fargo for "unauthorized access". They would not tell me who accessed them, what IP, any specifics. I had to renumber all 10 of my personal and business accounts (huge problem for a business with receivables and ETFs), and in the process they lost all transaction history which created a huge accounting burden. When I expressed concerns, they addressed me to their "legal department", that employs a couple of hundred lawyers full time. Would Peter Thiel fund this?

jsjohnst 10y ago
I'm certainly not rich or famous in any stretch of the imagination, yet Gawker felt inclined to personally slander me multiple times. So implying that only folks like Thiel have a reason in stopping the bullying that they do isn't accurate.

knowtheory 10y ago

Given that our courts are publicly funded and have limited bandwidth and throughput, your suggested solution faces serious resource constraints. Additionally, Thiel is altering the normal course of how these cases would have gone and specifically notes that here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-th... It's one thing to say that funding a lawsuit is fine, and another thing to say that its fine to target an organization to ensure that every grievance against them does not settle out of court and goes to trial.

tardos 10y ago

He is very much doing something under-handed to destroy Gawker. Gawker owns insurance to decouple financial harm from existential harm in the case of lawsuits like these. The civil system expects that victims who are harmed will try to maximize expected payout in case of a suit. If Hulk's legal case is indeed robust, he should have included every possible harm in the suit to maximize his payout. The decision to structure the suit in a way that excludes Gawker's insurance coverage is an under-handed technique which turns a civil suit into an indirect tactic to destroy Gawker. It is underhanded because, at the very least, it violates an expected principle of the civil suit system. This signals that the goal of the suit is not to compensate Hulk for damages, but to put Gawker out of business.

FireBeyond 10y ago
Right, exactly - question is how aware of this was Hogan? If he was aware, it's still not great. If he wasn't, that raises significant questions about SLAPP from Thiel, if not malpractice from his lawyers (whose direction are they fallowing, their apparent client, or his financier?).
willvarfar 10y ago
If a lawyer explained such a choice to me I'd likely choose to take the insurer out of the picture too. Principles.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  "Your Honor, the actions of Gawker caused emotional distress and irreparable damage to the earnings capability of my client, and thus we seek an award to compensate him for this loss." "Your Honor, we are dropping this claim here, but keeping all the rest intact." "You realize that this means the defendant will have little to no ability to compensate you for the damages you claimed and sought and stated caused you duress?" "... Yes... Your Honor." If you state it's about compensation for lost potential earnings, and such, and say you need to be made whole, then waive away a large part of your practical ability to be made whole, at what point does that become disingenuous?
10y ago

rhizome 10y ago

If you are putting forth the argument that merely financing a lawsuit is a corruption of the public trust, then we have much more serious problems with our legal system than Peter Thiel having it out for Gawker Larger crimes don't excuse smaller ones, which is also known as the Fallacy of Relative Privation. I'm also having trouble figuring out (or even learning) what public interest is served by this result? Does a rich guy shutting down a publication enter into it at all? I think it does.

ojbyrne 10y ago

The moral problem I see with this, is that actually pursuing a lawsuit is so inordinately expensive, that someone like Hulk Hogan, who presumably earned some cash in his life, can't pursue it on his own.

NamTaf 10y ago

My issue is that by selectively choosing what he does and does not finance, he is influencing things in his personal favour. I would far prefer the bllionaires in our society financing a big pool of money that then indescriminately funds the 'little guy' against the big corporation, so that the bias of money is removed from our legal system. Instead, this current process of being able to selectively target lawsuits means that the rich can indeed influence things in a biased fashion via their money. I'm all for Thiel to have it out with Gawker, but should that not be on his own valid legal claims? By funding this lawsuit in particular, he's negatively impacting other suits by omission. Basically, if money can't be kept out of the legal system then the money shouldn't be able to selectively enter it either, because either result produces a bias of the optimal situation where two equally strong legal teams debate a case in front of an impartial judge on its merits.