Last April, Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million for banging his best friend’s wife. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, The justice system wasn’t just like ‘hell of a hog you got there, here’s nine figures.’ Hogan won a lawsuit against Gawker for publishing nearly two minutes of a video that was recorded while he had sex with his buddy’s wife in 2007, at his friend’s request.
Gawker was the first one to publish the sex tape and kept it up even after numerous requests to take it down.
The plot thickened when it was made public that Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal founder and early Facebook investor, was footing Hogan’s legal bills while simultaneously sucking Gawker dry (no pun intended), due to a decade-old personal vendetta Thiel held against the New York-based media company for trying to out him for being gay back in 2007 before he was open about his sexuality.
Initially suing for $100 million, the jury found it to be too little based on the case, awarding Hulk with $55 million in economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress—tacking on even more based off of punitive damages.
Netflix dropped the trailer for its new media documentary Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press Friday that will explore the shifting role of journalism and the effect the ultra-wealthy have on the First Amendment.
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is hitting Netflix June 23.