John Lewis of BakerHostetler Discusses Use of Social Media in Gawker Class Action
I was reminiscing the other day about how I missed my favorite, snarky website Gawker when I saw that the District of New Jersey has proposed an amendment to the local rules (Local Rule 7.1.1) that would require disclosure of...more
To welcome the New Year, we venture outside this blog’s traditional realm of commercial division practice and procedure to reflect on the nature of “intent” at the intersection of professional wrestling and insurer coverage...more
On November 19, 2014, Sabrina Erdely’s Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” went viral. The article depicted the violent gang rape of a University of Virginia student...more
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen (he, formerly of SAC Capital Advisors) has agreed to be barred from commodities trading until 2018 under the terms of a settlement announced by the CFTC yesterday....more
The SEC has opened an inquiry into Alibaba’s accounting related to affiliated companies and related-party transactions, a big deal for a company “long seen as a symbol of China’s growing technological might”...more
A recent string of successful organizing drives at several prominent digital news media outlets calls into question all those confident predictions about the inevitable demise of unionism in the information-age economy. ...more
Where's the line between an intern and an employee? If you think that's an easy question, consider this: the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) defines "employ" broadly as to "suffer or permit to work." So, who's to say that...more
Litigation Over Interns Dries Up Internship Opportunities - The natural and probable consequence of litigation over unpaid internships was that such opportunities would disappear because the risk of litigation for even...more
A federal judge has sided with Gawker in the media company’s legal battle with a former unpaid intern who claimed that he should have been compensated as an employee. On March 29th, Judge Alison Nathan in the Southern...more
In 2006, Terry Gene Bollea, better known as “Hulk Hogan,” had sex with his best friend’s wife, Heather Clem. Apparently unbeknownst to either of them, his best friend Todd Alan Clem, now legally known as “Bubba the Love...more
A few days ago, a jury in Florida awarded Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) $140 million because Gawker posted a leaked sex video of the former wrestler. Rather than focus on the lurid details (which you can Google), let’s...more
In what might be a cautionary tale of the privacy risks for organizations who do business in buying and selling information, last Friday, a Florida jury awarded Hulk Hogan, whose true name is Terry Bollea, $115 Million in...more
Back in March we wrote about the group of former unpaid interns from Gawker Media’s Manhattan office suing to recover back pay under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and their desire to use social media to...more
U.S. District Court Judge Alison J. Nathan denied a request by the Gawker group of interns, who filed a class action against Gawker for its unfair business practices, to disseminate notice of their class action through...more
In what appears to be a sign of things to come, a federal court in New York recently approved the use of social media to notify potential class members who were more likely to be reached that way rather than by more...more
BakerHostetler attorney John Lewis joins Colin O'Keefe to discuss the social media to notify potential plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed against Gawker Media....more
Social media has dramatically impacted many areas of law, and class and collective action litigation is no exception. Recently, a number of former interns who sued Gawker Media LLC and its owner Nick Denton (Gawker) for wage...more
Well, maybe there aren’t too many people using social media in general. But, perhaps, that is the lesson to be taken from a recent federal court decision that addressed the intersection of one statute’s purpose and the...more
After more than a year of litigation (the filing of which we reported at the time), former unpaid Gawker Media interns will be permitted to send notices to other unpaid or allegedly underpaid interns to inform those potential...more
In Mark v. Gawker Media LLC, Case No. 13-cv-4347(AJN) (S.D. N.Y. Aug. 15, 2014), Gawker became the subject of yet another in a line of cases involving unpaid interns. Four interns brought suit under the FLSA, contending that...more
Quentin Tarantino probably wasn’t offended when the Hollywood gossip website Defamer, owned by Gawker Media LLC, compared him to a petulant child and accused him of throwing a “temper tantrum.” After all, the colorful...more
Quentin Tarantino's case could ultimately turn on one little word at the end of Gawker's story...more