![]() (Ayyadurai has since denied the involvement of a third party, including Thiel). That coincidence-as well as the fact that although other outlets also disputed Ayyadurai claim, he was only going after Gawker-furthered suspicions of a conspiracy theory. Ayyadurai’s lawyer? Frequent Gawker foe Charles Harder. Shiva Ayyadurai, a scientist and husband of The Nanny ’s Fran Dresher, sued for defamation and libel, seeking more than $35 million in damages for several Gizmodo posts that harshly disputed Ayyadurai’s claim to be the inventor of email. While Mac and Drange were reporting out the tip, Gawker was hit with another lawsuit. In Thiel’s case, it was a way to use the courts to bring down a company. But third-party litigation funding is usually a business transaction, done as an investment with a payout potential if the plaintiff wins the lawsuit. Getting an unrelated party to pay legal fees, known as third-party litigation funding, is legal and does not require disclosure. I told them if Nick ever wanted to talk about it, I’d love to discuss it.” ![]() “At the time, it all seemed a bit conspiratorial. “I had heard the rumors towards the end of the trial and I had reached out to the Gawker folks about it,” New York Times DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin said in an email. Harder, also represented multiple other plaintiffs suing Gawker. When the Observer covered the trial, a Gawker employee mused over drinks about the odd coincidence that one of Hogan’s lawyers, Charles J. Dan Abrams floated the possibility on his legal news site LawNewz, wondering whether there was anything to the tip he had received that some Tampa lawyers believed a benefactor had agreed to cover Hogan’s legal fees. (Those signs showed what seemed to be a curious commitment to a public trial rather than a payday, including Hogan’s refusal to agree to a settlement during the three-year-long lawsuit and his legal team’s decision to drop a claim from the suit that would have been covered by Gawker’s insurance).ĭuring the trial, conspiracy theories began gaining steam. “We’d heard the rumor and sort of dismissed the revenge-funder idea as too evil to be true, though in retrospect all along there were some obvious signs,” Gawker founder Nick Denton said in an email to the Observer. It says, “This dismissal is made without prejudice, whereby Plaintiff may later advance an action and refile a complaint after further investigations to ascertain and plead the identities of additional infringers resulting from Gawker Media’s contributory copyright infringement, by its promotion, aiding and abetting and materially contributing to the dissemination to third-parties of unauthorized copies of Plaintiff’s copyrighted work.Although Denton and others at Gawker may have privately entertained the notion that there was someone backing Hogan, it was hard to believe that a crazy sounding conspiracy theory could be true. But just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean a tech billionaire who was publicly outed by your website isn’t after you. Now, a week later and before Gawker made any response, Tarantino has withdrawn the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning he can refile at a later time if he chooses.Īnd in fact, Tarantino’s dismissal motion hints at but hardly guarantees a sequel. STORY: At Tarantino’s ‘Hateful Eight’ Reading, Director Reveals He’s Writing Second Draft, With New Ending Tarantino also attempted to buttress his contributory claim with the assertion that Gawker had solicited its readers before the original post, asking them to provide Gawker with the screenplay, and then later, amending its post with a new link to a copy that one of its readers had uploaded. Still, it wasn’t yet over because the judge allowed Tarantino to amend his lawsuit, which he did, this time with the claim that Gawker itself illegally downloaded to its computers an unauthorized infringing PDF copy of the screenplay and thus committed direct copyright infringement. Walter, “Plaintiff’s complaint fails to allege the identity of a single third-party infringer, the date, the time, or the details of a single instance of third-party infringement, or, more importantly, how Defendant allegedly caused, induced, or materially contributed to the infringement by those third parties.” Gawker’s attorneys attacked the idea that the mere possibility of someone reading the script amounted to a direct infringement act, and the judge agreed.Īccording to U.S. 'Justified' Director Michael Dinner Talks Tarantino's Involvement, Father-Daughter Olyphant and Raylan's Future Beyond 'City Primeval'īut the allegation appeared to need more factual support.
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