Nick Denton Vows Gawker Will Win On Appeal

Nick Denton

After losing to Hulk Hogan in a privacy lawsuit that awarded $140 million in damages to the former star wrestler, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton has broken his silence, according to Fortune.

In a lengthy blog post on the site he founded, Denton called the two-week trial in a Florida courtroom “a sham from the start,” and vowed the online site famous for publishing gossip and rumors would prove triumphant in an appeals court.

“We have had our day in trial court, and we lost. We will have our day back in appeals court, and we will be vindicated,” he writes. Denton also found time to disparage Hogan, “whose whole life is a performance.”

In his post, Denton detailed aspects of the case that led to a ruling against Gawker. He said the suit by Hogan was not solely about the tape, but about another video that purportedly shows Hogan uttering racial slurs. That video led to Hogan’s firing from the W.W.E., and legal briefs containing these arguments were not shown to the jury, Denton said.

He also talked about the company’s First Amendment right to publish newsworthy content, and that it should triumph – and has triumphed in previous court cases – in an appeals court, where any rights to privacy should fall short of the freedom of speech defense.