The troubled media group Gawker is close to settling a lawsuit with the Daily Mail over a Gawker post by a former worker entitled “My Year Ripping Off the Web With the Daily Mail Online”.
The news comes as the now bankrupt company is attempting to reach another settlement with the wrestler Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, who was awarded $140m by a Florida jury in a sex tape lawsuit.
Citing Gawker lawyer Gregg Galardi, the Wall Street Journal first reported today that the Mail was in the “final stages” of settling its suit, which was launched in the wake of an article by the former Mail Online writer James King.
King alleged in the post that he could personally attest that “the Mail’s editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication” and provided examples from his time working for the outlet.
The Mail strongly denied the allegations and hit back with a lawsuit demanding damages “in an amount to be determined at trial” in addition to court costs.
“Neither The Mail nor its editors condone or encourage – nor have they ever condoned or encouraged – dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, fabrication or plagiarism in the reporting, writing, or publishing of articles, and neither The Mail nor its editors train employees or freelance independent contractors to avoid or disguise attributions to source materials,” wrote Mail attorneys in their complaint to the New York state supreme court.
Neither the Mail nor Gawker were immediately available for comment.
Gawker currently faces several defamation lawsuits and has survived several others. Besides the Mail and Hogan, Gawker is being sued by the conservative writer Charles Johnson; Shiva Ayyadurai, a technologist whose claim to have invented email was challenged by the site; and a Chicago lawyer, Meanith Huon.
PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel, also a pledged delegate for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is believed to be bankrolling many of the suits against Gawker. Thiel branded the Gawker-owned tech blog Valleywag “the Silicon Valley equivalent of al-Qaida” following its attacks on his colleagues and friends.
