Gawker Founder Nick Denton to File for Personal Bankruptcy

Gawker Media founder and CEO Nick Denton is expected to file for personal bankruptcy on Monday.

Denton is set to make the filing in Manhattan federal court, a source told the New York Post. Denton filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on behalf of Gawker in June.

A Florida appeals court recently denied his motion for a shield against a court ruling in a case involving wrestler Hulk Hogan. Gawker, Denton, and A.J. Daulerio, a former Gawker.com editor, will have to pay Hogan $140.1 million in damages.

Denton alluded to the bankruptcy filing in two tweets on Monday morning before confirming it by re-tweeting an article about the news and writing “yes, this is happening today.”

“Gawker Media Group’s resilient brands and people will thrive under new ownership, when the sale closes in the next few weeks,” Denton tweeted on Monday.

“On this bitter day for me, I am consoled by the fact that my colleagues will soon be freed from this tech billionaire’s vendetta,” he added, referring to Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel, who secretly funded Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Gawker’s now extinct website Valleywag outed Thiel as gay in 2007.

A Florida jury awarded Hogan $115 million in March after ruling that the publication had violated Hogan’s right to privacy by posting his sex tape in 2012. Hogan received an additional $25 million in punitive damages a few days later.

Gawker published excerpts of a video, which Hogan claimed was secretly recorded five years prior, of the former WWE star having sex with the then-wife of his best friend, radio “shock jock” Bubba the Love Sponge.

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