Support NeoGAF

[Brakke]

Now Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Wants to Silence Reporting on Trump’s Hair

Gawker got a letter from Charles Harder -- who represented the Hulkster against Gawker -- threatening action over their recent article on Trump's hair.

Feinberg’s article—which drew potential connections between Trump and the work of a $60,000-a-pop hair-extension company called Ivari International—still went over rather well, drawing praise from staffers at the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic; and at least three winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

Charles J. Harder, sent Gawker a letter on behalf of Ivari International’s owner and namesake, Edward Ivari, in which Harder claims that Feinberg’s story was “false and defamatory,” invaded Ivari’s privacy, intentionally inflicted emotional distress, and committed “tortious interference” with Ivari’s business relations. Harder enumerates 19 different purportedly defamatory statements—almost all of which were drawn from several publicly available lawsuits filed against Ivari. [...]

Harder goes on to threaten legal action over the story: “Your actions expose you to substantial monetary damages and punitive damages.”

These claims are, on their face, ridiculous. For instance, one of the “defamatory” statements Gawker published, according to Harder, is this: “What’s more, Ivari’s New York location is inside Trump Tower—on the private floor reserved for Donald Trump’s own office.” Harder omits, of course, the sources on which this assertion was based: Ivari’s own brochure, an archived version of his web site, and multiple advertisements Ivari placed in New York Magazine, all of which specified his New York address as being on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Furthermore, he didn’t even quote the article correctly. Here’s what Feinberg actually wrote (emphasis mine): “What’s more, Ivari’s New York location was inside Trump Tower—on the private floor reserved for Donald Trump’s own office.”

The second set of “defamatory” statements, Harder claims, were “taken from a lawsuit filed against Mr. Ivari by Alicia Roach”—that is, an official judicial proceeding, the publication of which is protected by New York State’s fair report privilege:

Harder tried to claim copyright (??) on the letter to prevent Gawker from publishing it; they've disputed that claim and embedded a copy of the letter annotated with their answer to his complaints.

The Gawker piece goes on to cast aspersions against Peter Thiel over his involvement with Harder, while acknowledging that they don't have any way to know the specifics of that relationship beyond the Hulk case. Gawker outline several other pretty suspicious legal actions taken against them by Harder.

Setting aside the righteousness of the Hulk case, it seems likely that this Charles Harder is implementing a vendetta against Gawker. I don't know how it ends except with Gawker "dead".

 

[Gattsu25]

Yeah, this is looking to be the new playbook.

Billionaires assist in up to dozens of multi-million dollar court cases and fight them in districts that don't reward legal fee recompense in the event that the billionaire backed suit fails.

Sure fire way of killing any site or paper that you disagree with.

It was trialed against Mother Jones and finally landed with success against Gawker.

 

[Stinkles]

The balloon is being held by my childhood friend and classmate, Stan. This was a protest when trump destroyed a Scottish wildlife habitat to put up an awful golf course and then tried to add on a wind farm. And yes, he claims "Scots love me!"

 

[gdt]

Gawker probably deserved to go down....but man this isn't the last time we'll see shit like that. It's gonna be open season on snarky or opinionated media companies.

 

[Dennis]

Does this have anything to do with Peter Thiel or is it just that the same lawyer guy wants to try his luck twice?

 

[Brakke]

Does this have anything to do with Peter Thiel or is it just that the same lawyer guy wants to try his luck twice?

It's unclear. From the article: "Peter Thiel has refused to identify which other cases against Gawker he has funded with his own money.". Gawker also cite a Forbes article about the arrangement:

According to multiple sources familiar with Harder’s arrangement, he never had any direct contact with Thiel. And, these sources claim, Harder didn’t even know who was funding the litigation until FORBES broke the news in May. What he surely did know: The checks cleared. And there was presumably more where that came from, if he could find more cases.

Gawker continue later "Again, it should be noted that, while Thiel has acknowledged funding multiple legal attacks, including Hogan’s, nobody knows for sure whether he’s behind all of Harder’s efforts to harm the company, or just some of them, or if he can even control what his money is used for."

But Harder isn't just trying his luck "twice". The article here outlines a few other cases against Gawker he's represented.