If that's the case, then everyone who presents a legitimate claim in court is part of the problem. It's not like there's some alternative to the legal system he could've used to address his grievances. Moreover, opting out of using the legal system does nothing to improve matters for others.
This was not some meritless nuisance suit, as should be evident by the fact that he won.
The broader problem is when people do things like spam settlement offers for less than the cost of defense, or the fact that the legal system is so expensive to operate to begin with. But none of these can rightfully be blamed on Bolea, so your analogy is simply faulty. There's no "abuse" here to begin with: he had a valid legal claim and won on the merits in court.
It is telling that as much as you wax poetic about abusing the court system, you failed to acknowledge that Gawker is the one who violated a court order here. I mean, if winning a meritorious case is what you count as "abuse" of the legal system, exactly how do you rate that?
I don't have an issue with Bollea. I have an issue with Thiel.
Thiel did not have a legitimate claim in court, but he is still using his billions to destroy a news organization he does not like.
I should say again that I am not interested in defending Gawker here; I think Denton's an ass. I think Nazis are terrible too, but I think it's worth defending both their and Gawker's First Amendment rights.
Right, but you'd have to rule against Bolea, who was wronged, to get to Thiel. All Thiel did was help Bolea. So if Bolea did nothing wrong, then you have nothing left to accuse Thiel of. You may not like his motives, but he didn't actually do anything but help someone wronged seek justice.
Inasmuch as this creates a chilling effect to keep people from publishing stolen sex tapes... oh well.
Thiel is willing to fund an effectively infinite number of lawsuits, and he is willing to lose large sums of money doing so. To destroy Gawker, none of the lawsuits have to win in the long term. The particular merits of Bollea's case are a red herring.
Also, this is clearly wrong: "All Thiel did was help Bolea." [sic] Thiel clearly imposed conditions. The suit was specifically structured to exclude the insurance company, reducing Bollea's risk-adjusted odds of a payout.
Bollea also turned down settlement offers, presumably at Thiel's behest. That clearly suits Thiel, whose goal is not helping anybody, but destroying Gawker. It's not clear it was really in Bollea's best interests; there are reasons most of these cases get settled. Far more of us now know about Bollea's adultery than if this had been quietly settled, which increases the reputational harm that's supposedly part of Bollea's reason for suing. And Bollea has had to actually go through a trial, which increases the emotional suffering that again was a putative problem.
Thiel doesn't care here about helping people. Or even helping people who have been harmed by tabloid journalism. If he did, he would have structured it as something like the ACLU: transparent donations to a group of independent lawyers with a stated purpose, who then get to pick their own cases on the merits. What he cares about is destroying Gawker. Which is why he spent a decade secretly plotting and executing a series of lawsuits aimed to driving the company out of business.
Bolea is the only one who could make all those choices. Those are his rights, and if he chooses to (or not to) screw Gawker over with legal strategy, that's his decision. Neither you nor I can make that for him and unless he complains about it, the entire discussion is pure nonsense.
I have no reason to believe that Bolea couldn't have funded the lawsuit himself. Bolea has no obligation (and no reason) to do things in a way friendly to Gawker. I find it highly believable that he himself asked his lawyers to screw Gawker over even if it got him less cash. More money != more justice. And inasmuch as this puts a chilling effect on publications that spy on people's private sex life, I honestly don't have a problem. There's no news here. Just perverts who want to spy on a celebrity.
You can't just go out and manufacture lawsuits--at least, not without getting yourself in trouble in court when they're found bogus. Someone has to have some kind of case or they get laughed out of court. He might be willing to fund suits, but they won't go anywhere and at least some of the time one can recover reasonable costs and attorney's fees on victory.
So call me when he funds something clearly meritless. The funding has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of what Gawker did, therefore it should not affect the case outcome.
So yes, the merits of the suit are relevant. Funding tons of bogus suits is clearly different from helping Gawker's victims seek justice. And so far, evidence points to the latter.
You don't seem to understand that Thiel has funded more than one lawsuit. Of course, you also don't seem to know how to spell Bollea's name, so maybe you haven't been following this all that closely.
But yes, meritless lawsuits pursued because of personal agendas are an actual threat to First Amendment rights. Which is why anti-SLAPP statues have become necessary, and why 28 states have passed them in recent decades. As a NY Supreme Court justice wrote about strategic use of meritless lawsuits: "Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined." Thiel has found a new twist, where he can assault public participation without actually being a plaintiff. But he poses a very similar threat.
And yes, of course I can complain. Thiel is creating a systemic distortion around publishing the same way, e.g., tobacco companies funded systemic distortions of science. That the individual scientists have a right to free speech does not mean that I can't complain about how they use it. Or complain vociferously about the tobacco companies' damage to science, no matter how much they mewl about "fairness" and "seeing both sides". As a citizen, it's my job to make sure our democracy keeps working.
This was not some meritless nuisance suit, as should be evident by the fact that he won.
The broader problem is when people do things like spam settlement offers for less than the cost of defense, or the fact that the legal system is so expensive to operate to begin with. But none of these can rightfully be blamed on Bolea, so your analogy is simply faulty. There's no "abuse" here to begin with: he had a valid legal claim and won on the merits in court.
It is telling that as much as you wax poetic about abusing the court system, you failed to acknowledge that Gawker is the one who violated a court order here. I mean, if winning a meritorious case is what you count as "abuse" of the legal system, exactly how do you rate that?