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'Legalist' Startup Automates The Lawsuit Strategy Peter Thiel Used To Bankrupt Gawker (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gizmodo: "Two Harvard undergraduates have created a service called Legalist that uses what they call 'data-backed litigation financing,' analyzing civil lawsuits with an algorithm to predict case outcomes and determine which civil lawsuits are worth investing in," reports Gizmodo. The process is very similar to what billionaire Peter Thiel did when he secretly funded a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media. "Legalist says it uses an algorithm of 58 different variables including, as [Legalist cofounder] Eva Shang told the Silicon Valley Business Journal, who the presiding judge is and the number of cases the judge is currently working on. The algorithm has been fed cases dating back to 1989 and helps people figure out how long a case will last and the risks associated with it. In a presentation at Y Combinator's Demo Day on Tuesday [Legalist was developed as part of Y Combinator's Summer 2016 class], the founders claimed that the startup funded one lawsuit for $75,000 and expects a return of more than $1 million. Shang says the $1.40 is earned for every $1 spent in litigation financing, which can prove to be a profitable enterprise when you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars." Shang told Business Insider in reference to the Gawker lawsuit, "That's the kind of thing we're staying away from here." The company will supposedly be focusing on commercial and small-business lawsuits, and will not be backing lawsuits by individuals.
Where does it say they are looking for VC funding? They are advertising their new business, which might fund you if you have a business lawsuit that they think they can profit from.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Uh, "Y Combinator Demo Day" is put on for VCs. What do you think it is for?
Bankruptcy is an absurd punishment over a celebrity sex tape. But that isn't what bankrupted them.
Gawker got taken to court to have the film taken down, and lost. But decided to keep spreading the film anyway, and wrote an article bragging that they were going to ignore the ruling. Giving a big middle finger to the judicial system. That is what did them in. The court would have let them off much easier if they hadn't been complete assholes. It didn't help that AJ Daulerio "joked" that he would have given the green light to publish child porn.
Finally the punishment wasn't to bankrupt them. Hogan only sought $100 million in damages, it was the court that felt he was owed more.
This is wrong. Dangerously wrong.
If a judge gives a bad order that will hurt you, you file for a stay of that order pending appeal. Ignoring the order leads to punishment, as happened here! The Supreme Court has limited jurisdiction, they are simply going to ignore almost all of the petitions for a writ of certiorari sent to them. And it you will still get punished for just ignoring the order even if you were right! You can't just wait for orders from a higher court to comply. If the judge refuses to stay their order while you appeal it, you have to comply. Period. If they were wrong, well, you'll have to convince the courts of that on appeal. You don't get to just ignore everyone but the Supreme Court because you don't like an adverse ruling, it simply does not and hasn't ever worked that way.
I can't believe people modded this up, because it displays utter ignorance of legal process. Seriously, at least a few of you should have read Groklaw. You can go back and find that even SCO knew better than to flat-out ignore a court order like that. You can find many times where they asked for stays, plenty of times where they sent surreplies and dug in their heels at every opportunity to avoid complying, but not so much where they simply ignored the order.
So let that sink in for a moment: Gawker sunk below SCO's level here.
I tend to blame the client here, because I have to believe anyone could have made it through law school if they were giving advice that bad. If not, they're free to explore a legal malpractice claim against their own lawyers. Because what they did is so mind-bendingly stupid that you have to be willfully ignorant of legal process to think it makes any kind of sense that you can ignore anyone lower than the Supreme Court.
Yeah, that's it. Keep telling yourself that Gawker is the victim. Just double-down every time you get called out on your bullshit. If it works for Social Justice, it will work for you. (it doesn't work)
So it is ok to shame people like Hogan and Thiel because they are jerks? Who gets to determine who is a jerk and who is not? The people doing the shaming? Got it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust