Hogan had agreed with Gawker to take part ownership of Gawker including revenues, and then that was reneged upon after meeting with Thiel's (his) lawyers again, and similar after multiple points of near settlement.

The damages were then upped to ridiculous amounts. Financial / economic (not emotional) damages were listed at $50M.

Bollea's net worth, at it's peak, was $30-40M (edit: from $25M), and is now estimated at $8M - though most of that has been stripped by divorce, before any of this happened.

I am not sure how someone whose likely career income didn't reach $50M can now, in retirement, state that he suffered $50M in purely economic damages from this (remember, the emotional damage is separate, as is the punitive) - from what? Not from residuals on old WWF repeats - he would still be entitled to these. The occasional celebrity endorsement?

I can't see any realistic justification that his earning power for the rest of his life would total $50M, let alone that $50M only covers the fraction of his income that he _lost_ because of this.

Maybe a message needed to be sent that journalists aren't above disobeying court orders. Perhaps they should've done the right thing when they still had the chance. Everything else is just whining about how something that could happen (a judgement against them), did.

That's a matter for the court to decide, then. Not for a plaintiff to claim non-existent or dubious factual claims as to lost income.

It sounds like the court did think his claim was accurate, I'm pretty sure the judge has the ability to make decisions on what damages should be.

Well, not for nothing, the initial award was $140M. That has been reduced by over $100M to $31M...