[JonFish85]

A different way to look at it might be that in most cases, an illegal deed might be overlooked simply because someone didn't have the funds to see it through the court system. It's one thing if someone is funding endless lawsuits just to drive someone out of business, it's another for someone like Hogan to have a legitimate case, and for Thiel to fund his lawsuit. Thiel's funding of the case did not influence the judgement against Gawker, it simply allowed it to proceed further than if Hogan ran out of money.

I agree with what I think you're saying, that we should be careful about allowing someone to sue someone out of business simply out of spite; however, I think there's something to be said for someone with deeper pockets funding a legitimate suit. It might be comparable to things that the EFF funds, or that the ACLU takes on -- they have deeper pockets, and can take the financial hit that someone with a legitimate claim may not be able to take.

Imagine if Gawker published the same thing of some average middle-class person. They can't afford a high-priced lawyer, so likely Gawker gets away with something that, if it went to court, they would lose. In this case, the bully ran into someone who actually could fight back. As far as I know, Thiel didn't fund endless lawsuits just hoping to run them out of money. He funded a legitimate lawsuit that ended up with Gawker being found in the wrong for.

[nostrademons]

There's a systemic problem here, independent of the Thiel/Bollinger/Gawker case.

"Equality before the law" is supposed to be a fundamental value in America and most Western common-law countries. It's the underpinning behind much of our economic system, which is based on the idea that everybody's welfare is improved if people can independently make contracts with each other. If it turns out that peoples' welfare is not improved, they can sue for damages, and the court system will right the externality.

This assumption does not hold when the vast majority of people harmed cannot afford to sue.

Your last paragraph is a good illustration of the problem, and I think that's the point the grandparent post was making. In this case, it may've been a good thing for justice that Gawker pissed off the wrong billionaire. But it's a terrible system where only the organizations that piss off billionaires get slapped, and the only way to achieve justice is to have a billionaire on your side.

Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this. We've already tried a bunch, with public defenders and Miranda rights and continent legal fees and class action lawsuits and pro bono work. But the cost of a court case keeps spiraling upwards, and it's soon reaching the level where only big corporations and wealthy individuals can afford them. And non-capitalist countries are even worse off: in many of them, you need a personal connection to a powerful person to get a fair judgment.

[clairity]

> Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this.

the solution is to take the economic incentives out of lawsuits (the legal industry is a pure economic cost, so an added perk is a more productive economy). some random ideas:

  * make public law schools free and disband the various bar associations (increase competition/lower barriers to entry)
  * make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
  * limit the length of lawsuits to 3 months total (limits legal costs)
  * make judges prefer non-monetary compensation (like volunteer work).

[natecavanaugh]

> make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)

My issue with this is, 3 months from actual harm, or realization of harm? There just seem to be a lot of cases where harm does not show themselves immediately, but may take a few years to appear.

[clairity]

yes, there's unlikely a perfect solution, especially not one that comes out of 5 minutes of musing on it.

injuries involving bodily harm (assault, murder, etc.) might require more time, and financial crimes might take years to uncover, as you point out. but the underlying idea would be to make people act on injury quickly so that justice is delivered while memories and evidence are fresh (lowering costs) and deterrence is more immmediate and visible.

[emodendroket]

What country even exists anymore that could really be called non-capitalist? Maybe North Korea or Cuba? That's about all the ones I can think of.

[untog]

I agree that your point has merit. It's difficult to work out where the middle ground is, or whether "billionaires get to choose who sees their day in court" is better or worse than "poor people don't get their day in court" (they feel similar).

At the least, it would be good if those funding these cases had to make that fact public - Thiel only admitted that he was funding Hogan's case after journalists uncovered it. If he was campaigning on the side of truth and righteousness I can't see any reason why he wouldn't say as much (like the ACLU does).

[debt]

Gawker didn't go after the average person, they very specifically went after a billionaire, Peter Thiel.

Then after that, Hulk Hogan filed a lawsuit because he got caught saying super racist things against African Americans on tape and Thiel secretly funds that lawsuit.

Does this make Thiel, by extension, somewhat racist considering he clearly had no qualms funding this lawsuit?[1] He's also a well-known Trump supporter, go figure lol

Call me crazy, but this seems very counter to where Silicon Valley wants to be and Silicon Valley values.

He's also considered a pretty well-known VC in the area. It's not hard to figure out why SV has so many diversity problems, when you have people like Thiel hailed as their leader.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/03/hulk-hogan-sue...

[leroy_masochist]

> Hulk Hogan filed a lawsuit because he got caught saying super racist things against African Americans on tape

I thought the Hulkster sued because Gawker published a movie of him having sex with his friend's wife, filmed by his friend without Hogan's knowledge

[untog]

They're the same tape.

Whether Hogan sued primarily because of privacy invasion or because it's published evidence of him being racist is something only he can know, really.

[classicsnoot]

I am not from your tech utopia, but i get the feeling that your so called "values" are more to blame for the wealth disparity than any single actor, regardless of their net worth. Assuming you live in SV, you are the folks that moved there, get paid obscene money to wrangle 1s and 0s, drive up the property value, and demand changes to the community to suit your tastes. When you were boarding your chartered bus to get you safely to the Green Zone, did you think you were part of the solution? I can think of 1 famous conservative VC (not my world so there are presumably more) and maybe 2 companies that make some claim to be, or are labeled as, conservative. The vast majority of the SV tech crowd and companies are liberals, and your Bernie T-shirt doesn't make you an "ally". Be honest with yourself: SV companies generate spam email, dump tons of thermal excess into the environment, and gentrify neighborhoods. Acting like you are somehow a different breed, and not a parasitic community (i know that term seems negative or besmirching but i mean it in its purely biological form), is something no one else is falling for. I realize this is an emotional rant that brushes with broad strokes, but i am pretty tired of West Coast folks acting like everything was fine before Trump and conservatives are backwards racists incapable of espousing compassion or modernity. That isn't an excuse, it is an explanation.