On Monday May 2, 2016, wrestling icon and reality-television celebrity Hulk Hogan filed another civil suit in Florida state court over the alleged distribution of a sex tape featuring the wrestler. According to the complaint, Hogan accuses Gawker Media, LLC (the gossip website whom he had just secured a $140 million jury verdict against in March), and a slew of individual defendants of intentionally interfering with his career in the WWE by obtaining and releasing a sex tape recorded without his consent. The tape in question allegedly contains video of Hogan using racist language to describe his daughter’s then-boyfriend; the WWE claimed that such insensitivity was the driving force behind his firing.
While the news of Hogan allegedly using racist remarks on the tape comes as no surprise to those who followed the trial, the new claims made by Hogan against Gawker and the new defendants are somewhat unexpected. The complaint states Gawker intentionally interfered with Hogan’s contractual and business relationships and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon the former wrestler by participating in a scheme to extort more than a million dollars from him. The complaint adds attorney Keith Davidson, talent agency Don Buchwald & Associates Inc. and agent Tony Burton, and Cox Radio Inc. and its DJs Michael “Cowhead” Calta and Matt “Spice Boy” Loyd, amongst others, as participating individually and collectively in the scheme.
Hogan claims that the defendants obtained the illicitly recorded sex tape of him and Heather Clem — the wife of his then-best friend and radio personality Todd “Bubba the Love Sponge” Clem — and attempted to sell the recordings back to Hogan and his attorneys, lest the wrestler wanted them released in their entireties online through Gawker’s website.
The new lawsuit comes just days after Gawker filed an appeal to have the $140 million verdict tossed on the grounds that Hogan and his representatives lied about the case to the court and the jury over how much the release of the tape, of which the site published only roughly one hundred seconds of a thirty minute long tape Gawker allegedly received of the recorded tryst, caused him distress and invaded his privacy. Gawker’s appeal relies heavily on a number of previously sealed documents that a Florida appellate court had demanded by unsealed and released as part of the public record. Those documents included evidence that the jury in the original case never got to hear, including text messages between Hogan and the Clems, statements made referencing the racial slurs Hogan used on multiple tapes, and testimony of the Clems, who had settled with Hogan out of court for an undisclosed amount (although the amount is rumored to be minuscule in comparison to the verdict Hogan eventually received).
There was no mention of the new named defendants during the trial, nor did Hogan make any claim for extortion at that time. However, that case was tried in federal court after Hogan’s state claims were previously tossed.