Celebrities, Media and Journalism, Trials

Gawker Body-Slams Hulk Hogan In Ongoing Litigation

Gawker pins Hulk Hogan to the mat in the latest round of this bitter legal battle.

onAugust 12, 2015 at 3:03 PMAugust 12, 2015 at 8:57 PM

Since our last close look at the long-running litigation between Gawker and Terry Bollea (aka wrestler Hulk Hogan), which arose out of Gawker’s publication of excerpts from Hogan’s sex tape, this wild case has only gotten wilder. The National Enquirer and Radar Online reported on the existence of tapes recording Hogan “spewing foul-mouthed racial slurs — including the N-word.” The WWE fired Hogan in the wake of the scandal. Hogan then turned around and accused Gawker of being behind the career-ending leak. He filed an emergency motion seeking sweeping discovery — specifically, discovery requiring Gawker and its attorneys to “turn over all their computers, email systems, and electronic devices to wholesale inspection and review by a third party” — to allow him to prove his (entirely speculative) claim that Gawker leaked his racist rants in violation of a protective order.

Gawker denied responsibility for the leak — and just filed an opposition to Hogan’s motion that’s quite convincing. From the opening of Gawker’s opposition (emphases added):

[O]ne of the reporters who wrote the Enquirer articles has publicly stated that Gawker was not the source. That statement is not surprising – after all, the information held by Gawker’s counsel does not match the information reported by the Enquirer. The reported information, however, was known by literally dozens of people who are not parties to this litigation.

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From Pilot and Above The Law

For all the details, check out the Gawker filing (pp. 2-10), which marshals the extensive evidence in support of Gawker’s position. Gawker also offers legal arguments about why the discovery sought by Hogan is unconstitutional and violates attorney-client privilege, but the factual material presented by Gawker, showing that it could not have been the source of the leak because it didn’t have access to all the material in question, should be conclusive.

Of course, Gawker isn’t out of the legal woods just yet. Trial in the underlying sex-tape case is currently scheduled for March 2016. But Gawker should be able to fight that match on its own merits, without the distraction of collateral litigation in a different arena.

(Disclosure: As we’ve mentioned earlier, Above the Law Redline, the ATL spinoff aimed at bringing law to a broader audience, is powered by Gawker’s Kinja platform.)

Joint Opposition of the Gawker Defendants and Their Counsel to Plaintiff’s Emergency Motion for Discovery [Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit – Pinellas County, Florida]

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