Pretty sure the ruling said Gawker needed to front $40 million to appeal. They would have to liquidate to get that kind of cash.
They sold some portion of the company earlier this year, and the presumption from the announcement of that was that it was done to ensure they'd have the money to post in escrow in order to appeal.
Gawker has thought it likely that they'd probably lose at trial and would have to win on appeal. They probably didn't anticipate the award being that high, but they should be pretty well set to get this to an appeals court while continuing operations.
EDIT:
I dunno.
I think it might be like this.
They can't appeal the first decision where the jury awarded 140 Million without first putting money up. Money they apparently can't afford.
But they can appeal this second decision where the Judge just refused to reduce the amount they had to pay. If they get the amount reduced enough on appeal, they can then afford put up enough money to appeal the original ruling. But if they lose the appeal to reduce the money then they are SOL.
But I'm not sure how it works. So somebody correct me if I'm wrong, because I might have it totally wrong.
You're wrong.
When you lose a case in Florida, you can appeal. However, just saying that you're appealing doesn't stop the judgment against you unless the court issues a stay of the judgment. If you don't manage to obtain a stay on the judgment, you have to pay up. Florida law provides that you can get this stay automatically if you post an appeals bond, which is the the amount of the judgment plus two years of interest. However, Florida law caps the size of that appeals bond at $50m regardless of the judgment, so the court could have handed Hogan a billion dollar judgment and the appeals bond would remain at $50m.
You can still appeal without posting an appeals bond, but you will have to make payments towards the judgment while the appeal continues, and if you win on appeal and the money you paid towards the judgment is gone by the time you win the appeal, you might just be out everything you paid out (which is why this isn't a real option in the Hogan case).
Before they post the money, or make a motion to get a stay without the bond, they can say to the judge "You've really fucked this up, so before we take this to an appeals court to have you overruled, would you like to reconsider?" They don't have to post a single dollar in escrow for that, so it's worth trying.
The judge said no, and this case is going to move to an appellate court eventually.
