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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

The subject of the case is a red herring.

Typically in these situations, a settlement is reached or insurance covers the damages.

That didn't happen. Thiel had an axe to grind against Gawker, invested $10m in the litigation, and pushed the case past settlement offers - even removing a claim that allowed insurance to cover damages. It focused on maximizing the damage to Gawker, which isn't what civil court is typically supposed to do.

Thiel was out for blood, and he used his money in someone else's case to get it.

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Yes, Thiel was out for blood, but so what? There's nothing inherently wrong or illegal about feeling vengeful. It's a natural human emotion experienced and indulged by pretty much everyone at some point in time. It's not like we can eradicate it or make it illegal, so complaining about Thiel's goals or feelings seems like a waste of time to me.

The issue, as usual, should be with the system itself.

Is what happened here unjust? Is it wrong for Gawker to have had to pay the $140M? If you believe so, then your complaint should lie with the court. People should expect justice in court, rather than "typically" avoiding it via settlements and insurance. Our judicial system should be robust enough to make the motivations of a lawsuit's participants irrelevant. No matter how badly Thiel wants to destroy Gawker, they should only be liable for an appropriate amount of damages. If the court failed Gawker there, that's the court's fault.

On the flip side, if you believe the settlement was just, then it's Gawker's fault for doing something so bad that it cost them $140M in the first place.

EDIT: At least 6 downvotes now, but no replies. If you disagree, can you defend your reasoning at all?

I think Gawker was wrong, and deserved to be seriously damaged by this (and many other things), but lets not pretend that this wouldn't have hurt them if they weren't wrong. Defending yourself takes an enormous amount of energy, time, and money. If a billionaire hates you they can fund lots of lawsuits against you that would have otherwise never materialized. This would constantly drain you, even if you win, even if you win costs. Since the billionaire is just funding it, they don't even need to step into the court room to ruin your life.

In this case Thiel waited (probably) until Gawker had done something particularly bad (at least liability wise). That's good, but its easy to see what someone of his resources could choose to do with no apparent repercussions. Of course this is disturbing. The fact that our court system is abusable in this fashion doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the individuals who might so abuse it.

The article took this case as proof and omen way beyond what it actually shows, but its not nothing.

So your complaint is that Thiel could have done something else than what he did, and that would have been bad?

In reality Thiel didn't abuse the court system with meritless cases. Had he done that, I would also have been disturbed. But since he didn't, it's hard for me to get upset about it.

What you're outlining is what people are worried about here - that uninvolved third parties with means can influence civil court cases they are biased against.

You could argue that this has always been the case, where the U.S. justice system has always been biased in favor of those with the wealth or the means, but does that really justify not pushing back against it?

Keep in mind that I'm not defending Gawker or sex tapes. If it comes down to deciding between a world where the sex tape with my best friend's wife can be published, or a world where billionaires can use their wealth in court to take out press organizations, I'm leaning more towards the latter.

There's nothing inherently wrong with third parties helping each other out. I can't understand why anyone would be worried about that. In fact, a lawyer is an uninvolved third party.

What is wrong is the degree to which wealth influences the outcome of a case. That's the real problem. In an ideal world, a person's case could be presented with equal strength regardless of the money spent for or against them. Obviously we don't live in this ideal world, but imo we should be laser focused on moving in that direction.

What frustrates me is the utter lack of focus on that task. Almost nobody seems to care about the broken legal system itself. All of the attention is being diverted to Thiel, billionaires, etc, and it's maddening. How do we expect to fix problems that we are willfully ignoring?

The media is acting in its own self-interest by framing this as a free speech issue. The "99%ers" are acting in their own self-interest by framing this as a billionaires-vs-the-rest-of-us issue. Where are the "good and just" people who should be acting in their own self-interest by demanding improvements in justice? Shouldn't that be all of us?

It may reach the point of fixing the court process eventually, but understanding why it's an issue is also an important first step.

The how this issue is going to be fixed will probably be a long time coming, unfortunately. Give it time.

An interesting first step would be to include more transparent disclosure of the third parties who speculate on these court cases. Thiel very obviously knew this would backfire if it became public, which is why they kept it secret for so long.

I hope you're right, but I'm not so confident. People as a whole are not systems thinkers. We tend to take systems for granted, and assume they are eternal and unchangeable. I think this case is a perfect example. It's hard to mobilize the masses behind something boring and complex like court reform. It's easy, however, to incite them to hate an individual person, especially if he's a billionaire. Even on HN, it's mostly people attacking/defending Thiel himself.

Also, for what it's worth, the fact that something backfires in the court of public opinion doesn't mean that it's bad. It could just mean the public is under-informed or easily deceived.

Wow, were you really down 6? Per my other comment[1], I couldn't upvote you enough: the problem is that our truth-finding method in the justice system is vulnerable and open to manipulation. It should be robust against investments like Thiel's: roughly, an exponential investment of resources should only have a linear impact on the verdict.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824193

Again, you're bringing up the red herring: that this is really just a legal issue that was adjudicated in the court case, and that the motivation and cause of this court case being brought is completely irrelevant to the ethics of what Thiel did.

Saying that vengefulness is a part of the experience does not make the actions you perform vengefully suddenly OK, or else a we'd think a lot more highly of most murderers. Further, this isn't a complaint about his emotions. It's a complaint about his wielding his substantial power in order to bankrupt a company he felt annoyed by—it's about his actions, not his feelings.

I don't want to directly comment on Thiel's actions, but one of the most annoying things in court cases that I care about is when it reaches a settlement, preventing precedent from being set, and allowing other actors to do the same thing as the defendants, knowing that somebody else is going to need to bring them to court in order for them to be held accountable. Settlement in cases can be a greedy/short term out that allows the same injustice the plaintiffs suffered to be perpetrated against others.

I thought this was the common complaint about settlements, which is why it confuses me that people are complaining in this case that the purpose of a civil court lawsuit is to extract the largest settlement.

Example:

"The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process." - CPLX

P.S. No witchhunt being started CPLX, just confused by your position.

I won't pretend Thiel's behavior in this matter is unambiguously good, but Gawker is a habitual bad actor, assisting stalkers, violating privacy on numerous occasions for reasons most reasonable people wouldn't consider newsworthy and offering bounties for stolen property. Several of those behaviors are illegal, and the last is likely criminal.

Viewed in a favorable light, Thiel wants to discourage gawker and companies like it by offsetting some of the risk of taking legal action. Viewed in an unfavorable light, he wants to take revenge on Gawker for invading his privacy and that of his friends. Even in the worst case, I can't say I blame him.

Let's not forget that Gawker monied up ahead of the trial, too. In a January 2016 staff memo, Gawker CEO Nick Denton described an investment by Columbus Nova (controlled by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselburg) as a way to make sure his company had the resources for a full-stakes court battle.

The judge in the case had recommended mediation, but both sides really wanted a big trial. So they got one.

Was Nova involved in the court case, or have a personal vendetta against Hogan?

Interesting. Can you provide sources and also what do you think the end game is? Did Nick Denton know he was going to lose and go ahead anyway? Or was he just unable to conceive of losing?

Glad to oblige on sources. Here's a copy of Nick Denton's memo announcing the investment and its relevance to the Hogan litigation: http://jimromenesko.com/2016/01/20/gawker-takes-outside-mone...

And here's a Fortune story with a little more background on the investors: http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/gawker-funding/

On the "endgame" question, it's worth noting that Gawker's new backer is one of the world's 100 richest people, with an estimated $9.8 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Thiel checks in at just $2 billion or so.

If both billionaires want to keep battling, this case could rattle around in a lot of different courts for a long time. We may not know yet who ultimately wins/loses.

This may be one of the worse decisions I've seen in my lifetime. Does Denton not understand the high level ramifications of his decision? Has he any sense of self perseveration not blottoed by cocaine? He is now directly under the watchful eyes.

> On the "endgame" question, it's worth noting that Gawker's new backer is one of the world's 100 richest people, with an estimated $9.8 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Thiel checks in at just $2 billion or so.

This isn't about money any more. Or laws.

> If both billionaires want to keep battling, this case could rattle around in a lot of different courts for a long time. We may not know yet who ultimately wins/loses.

Oh we may be sure Nick Denton loses. To be a fly on the wall when Garry Kasparov heard about this!

You can tell it's a hit piece because having a vendetta against someone outing a gay man is something most people would find perfectly acceptable and ruins the narrative.

Precisely. The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process.

Also to this general point, another check and balance for civil litigation are the reputational and discovery risks. With very few exceptions we require proceedings to be public, meaning that a plaintiff has to be willing to publically stand behind his action, and we allow defendants to have very broad discovery rights, to inspect the books and communications of a plaintiff.

Both of these are disincentives to filing a revenge based lawsuit -- as opposed to an action primarily to recover monetary damages -- and these were perverted as well by having a hidden third party who managed to evade that scrutiny during the proceeding.

There is a reason why vendetta based litigation is not all that common, and formal and informal checks and balances are a big part of it.

As an aside, if I were in Peter Thiel's camp right now I would hope to God he's all paid up with his taxes, doesn't have any angry lovers or ex-employees out there, and isn't engaged in any unethical or embarrassing activities, given that he now almost certainly has a lot of investigative journalism firepower pointed at him.

You're advocating a flawed legal system. You're basically saying: The legal system can be abused by any rich person with a vendetta, therefore shame on Thiel for abusing it.

However, it's not feasible (or desirable) to put an end to rich people or vendettas. Thus, isn't the best option here to fix the legal system itself?

There is no system on this planet that cannot be at least somewhat abused by a person with a billion dollars in resources and no ethical constraints.

I agree. You're totally right. But does the fact that we're not perfect mean that we shouldn't strive to be? Is there any evidence that our court system doesn't have room for improvement?

What worries me is that when people see a case like this, they take it for granted that our court system is abusable and denigrate the abuser. But any system that incentives abuse is itself a corrupt and flawed system that will give rise to more abusers.

Imagine, for example, a country with no laws against murder.

I agree that weaponization of the courts as a tool for bullying, carrying out vendettas, and/or shutting down innovation from small companies is a huge problem (Donald Trump's penchant for this is one of the reasons I have a hard time closing the gap on supporting him).

I think a good way to keep this system fairly stable but approximately prevent its weaponization is to require that each side has equivalently-priced representation. The Court should require the wealthier party to disclose their legal costs and pay 1x that much money into a trust managed by the Court, which would then be forwarded to the other party's attorneys. This way, both sides are evenly matched and it's a fair fight; if Thiel wants to pump $10m into the other party's legal offense fund, that's fine, but he'll have to pump an equivalent amount into the legal defense fund.

This will lead to people using shell corporations so not only will you have to use an entity without assets but also have to pay for its defense.

> The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process.

Seems like distortion in the same way paying a friend's bail is corruption. Not at all!

> Both of these are disincentives to filing a revenge based lawsuit -- as opposed to an action primarily to recover monetary damages -- and these were perverted as well by having a hidden third party who managed to evade that scrutiny during the proceeding.

It is honestly news to me that the purpose of lawsuits is not to be revenge based but to be based on recovering the highest amount of monetary damages. Can you explain in more detail why you believe this to be so?

You're aware that some people view settlements to be a form of corruption? i.e. Big Guy pays off little guy, continues to screw little guys using the superpower of inordinate amounts of money. It is a complaint I've heard many times before.

> As an aside, if I were in Peter Thiel's camp right now I would hope to God he's all paid up with his taxes, doesn't have any angry lovers or ex-employees out there, and isn't engaged in any unethical or embarrassing activities, given that he now almost certainly has a lot of investigative journalism firepower pointed at him.

Amen, I've been saying the same thing. I'd be advising Thiel to carry full body hidden camera/audio recording devices in future, as well as examining all my personal and financial affairs with a fine toothcomb before the enemy gets to them.

It should not have to be this way, but you know, it is.

> The subject of the case is a red herring.

Agreed. It matters to Terry, but doesn't explain what's happening now.

> Thiel was out for blood, and he used his money in someone else's case to get it.

Correct. The 'Thielite' side I'm on doesn't dissent from this.

> It focused on maximizing the damage to Gawker, which isn't what civil court is typically supposed to do.

Not so sure about that. I think you may be extending your ideas about civil lawsuits over the edge. I've never heard it said before now that one of a civil court's functions was to maximize the settlement. Presumably civil courts existed without insurance companies being around at some point, so maybe not.

I'm open to having my mind changed though, should you find evidence in law of a civil court's function being described in that way.

> even removing a claim that allowed insurance to cover damages.

Yeah, ensuring that the guilty party had to pay out of their own pocket.

The subject of the case really isn't a red herring.

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