To protect its assets from a very, very vengeful Hulk Hogan, Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The insanely popular website and media company was sued by Hogan after they released, against a judge’s advisement, a sex tape in which Hogan can be seen having sex with his best friend Bubba the Love Sponge‘s ex-wife. Naturally, it would’ve been extremely embarrassing and scandalous if that tape were very made public. Thanks to a post on Gawker.com that has been viewed 7.6 million times as of the time of this writing, it was made very public, and Hogan refused to go down without a (legal) fight.
He won that fight back in March of this year after years of legal proceedings, when he was awarded a $140 million judgment in court against Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton and former Gawker editor, A.J. Daulerio, the man who posted the tape on Gawker.com on October, 4, 2012.
The $140 million hit to Gawker‘s empire was rumored to be a potentially fatal issue for Gawker, but this news does not mean that they’re suddenly shuttering their business. As Politico points out, the company will “continue to operate as normal while the bankruptcy process proceeds and it appeals the Hogan judgment.”
There’s also the interesting development of Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire that’s reportedly bankrolling the efforts of Hogan and others who have lawsuit bones to pick with Gawker. Reports of other lawsuits remain unfounded, but the odds of the Gawker v Hogan drama going away quietly are slim to none.
