In addition to being a prominent figure in Silicon Valley, Thiel is also known among conservative political circles. Jurors initially awarded $115 million to the wrestler and later added an additional $25 million to the award.Ī judge’s decision on Wednesday to deny Gawker a new hearing is now being appealed to a higher court. Thiel told the newspaper that he has been quietly working against Gawker for years and has financed an effort to find potential plaintiffs against the website.Ī jury recently ruled in favor of Hogan’s claim against the company, which published part of a sex tape involving him in 2012. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.” “It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he told the Times. In 2007, Valleywag, an on-again-off-again Silicon Valley offshoot of Gawker, wrote a post about Thiel’s sexual orientation titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” Thiel told the Times that his animus stemmed from what he viewed as bullying by the company’s blogs.
Gawker sued professional#
Thiel, who founded PayPal and is an investor in Facebook, told The New York Times that he’s spent roughly $10 million to back a lawsuit brought by professional wrestler Terry Bollea - better known by his stage name, Hulk Hogan - against the owner of Gawker and other sites. And in a separate piece on the Fox Searchlight case titled "Ungrateful Interns Sue Over Privilege of Fetching Natalie Portman's Coffee," Gawker expounds on the illustrious history of the unpaid internship gambit: This is America, where exploiting young people via unpaid internships, thus cutting out anyone who isn't rich or well-connected, is a time-honored tradition.Īlleged illegality aside, potentially sharing the values of what you satirize is mighty (G)awkward.Peter Thiel, a high-profile tech entrepreneur and investor, admitted late Wednesday that he’s been funding a lawsuit against Gawker Media that threatens to cripple the company.
Gawker sued trial#
The verdict in his favor came after a three-week trial in which jurors heard testimony from Hogan. Ironically, Gawker published a snarky article about unpaid interns, showing they do know it's immoral, at least. A Florida jury on Friday awarded Hulk Hogan 115 million in his lawsuit against Gawker, finding the media company violated the wrestlers privacy by posting a 90-second clip of him having sex with the wife of his best friend, Bubba the Love Sponge. The "Black Swan," Gawker, and NBC lawsuits should show you that there's a growing awareness that unpaid interns are allegedly being misused. The internship is bound by an unpaid internship agreement - and make sure it complies with the Labor Department's internship guidelines.The internship specifically states whether a paid gig will be offered at the end of it.Add workshops and mentoring sessions - or better yet, craft a more formal internship program. If the interns are just grabbing coffee and answering phones, that's no good. The interns aren't displacing or augmenting your normal workforce by having them do the work a regular employee would do.Legal Requirements for Unpaid InternsĪs we've discussed before in the context of the "Black Swan" case, using unpaid interns can be OK under certain circumstances. It seeks unpaid wages for hundreds of interns who worked at the company over the past three years at the network's cable channel, MSNBC, and on shows like "Saturday Night Live," according to The Hollywood Reporter.īoth complaints essentially argue that the interns were augmenting and displacing the regular workforce, but weren't getting paid for it - a cardinal labor law sin. The suit, filed Friday, seeks unpaid wages, overtime and spread-of-hours wages, ABC News reports.
In the Gawker case, three former interns allege they spent at least 15 hours a week writing, editing, researching and moderating comment forums for the company's websites and "were not paid a single cent for their work," according to the complaint.
The string of cases cropping up signals a warning to business owners who rely heavily on unpaid internships.
Gawker sued movie#
The new lawsuits are sequels, of sorts, to the Fox Searchlight Pictures case, in which a judge ruled the company violated federal and state minimum wage laws by not paying interns who worked on the movie "Black Swan." Now Gawker Media and NBC Universal are being sued by ex-interns as well. It's not just movie studios facing unpaid intern lawsuits.