After awarding former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan $115 million last week in a case involving the online posting of a sex tape, a Florida jury on Monday upped the award by more than $25 million for punitive damages, WTSP reported.
The award represents additional damages that the jury decided Hogan should receive from Gawker Media, its owner and Gawker's former editor-in-chief, who posted the video and story in 2012.
Gawker Media owns Gawker.com and Gizmodo.com, among other media properties.
The verdict means that Gawker Media founder Nick Denton must personally pay $10 million — and that former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio, who posted excerpts from the tape, must pay $100,000.
In a statement, Heather Dietrick, Gawker's president and general counsel, predicted that the company would prevail in an appeal when a fuller account of the case is heard.
"There is so much this jury deserved to know and, fortunately, that the appeals court does indeed know," she said. "So we are confident we will win this case ultimately based on not only on the law but also on the truth."
Jurors deliberated for about three hours on Monday before handing down the award to Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Pamela Campbell also ordered that the infamous sex tape be sealed, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Lawyer Michael Berry said the verdict already rendered will be financially devastating for Denton and that the $115 million message had already been heard loud and clear.
"Your verdict has already punished my clients. It will no doubt deter others. Your verdict will send a chill down the spine of publishers, producers, writers throughout the country. It has set a message of deterrence already," said Berry.
Hogan’s attorneys argued that with Denton’s net worth being $120 million, it was up to the six-person jury to send a message to Gawker and other internet websites.
"The simple message that relates to this case is the line is drawn at publication without consent of a recording of a private act in a private bedroom and you can send that message to Gawker for their conduct in this case and you can send it to the other similarily situated. And that's not my language, that's the language of the law," said Kenneth Turkel, Hogan's attorney.
Hogan sued Gawker, an independent media company, for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with the wife of his former best friend. The black-and-white tape, made in the mid-2000s, showed Hogan having sex with the wife Todd Clem, a radio personality better known as Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
In her statement, Gawker's Dietrick noted that three state appeals court judges and a federal judge had "repeatedly ruled that Gawker’s post was newsworthy under the First Amendment. We expect that to happen again — particularly because the jury was prohibited from knowing about these court rulings in favor of Gawker, prohibited from seeing critical evidence gathered by the FBI and prohibited from hearing from the most important witness, Bubba Clem."
The pair said they didn't know they were being recorded, but Dietrick added, "Didn’t the jury deserve to know that Bubba told his radio listeners and then the FBI, in a meeting where lying is a criminal offense, that Hulk Hogan knew he was making a sex tape? Didn’t the jury deserve to know the FBI uncovered multiple tapes of Hulk Hogan having sex with Bubba’s wife? Didn’t the jury deserve to know about the text messages Hulk Hogan sent to Bubba that undermine this case?"
