Hulk Hogan awarded $115M in Gawker suit
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.— A jury has sided with ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and awarded him $115 million (U.S.) in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media.
The jurors reached the decision Friday evening, less than six hours after they began deliberations. The trial lasted two weeks. Hogan, who was born Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife.
Hogan contended it was a violation of his privacy.
Gawker’s editors contended the video and an accompanying post was a newsworthy commentary on the ordinariness of celebrity sex videos.
In closing arguments, attorneys for Hogan said the former wrestler had suffered terribly when excerpts of the sex tape were posted online by Gawker.
His lawsuit against Gawker, its founder Nick Denton, and the web post’s author, A.J. Daulerio, has been on trial in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., since early March.
Hogan maintains he was secretly recorded and his privacy was violated. He is shown in the video hav- ing sex with the wife of a friend, Tampa DJ Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
On Friday, his attorneys asked the jury to award him roughly $50 million in compensatory damages, a figure they arrived at by calculating how much Hogan might have earned if he had chosen to market the sex tape himself, a possibility he testified had never crossed his mind. If the jury decides to pursue punitive damages, his attorneys will have another opportunity to ask for more money.
In his final appeal to the jury, Hogan attorney Kenneth Turkel described Gawker as a website run by morally debased, traffic-hungry writers who don’t believe the right to privacy exists for anyone. With files from New York Times service