• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, November 2, 2016

The legal battle that bankrupted Gawker Media and its boss, forced the closing of flagship Gawker.com, as well as the sale of its sister sites, and made the moniker “Bubba the Love Sponge” a household name well outside his usual target audience, is now over.

On Wednesday, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton announced in a blog post that the company, which continues to exist solely to settle prior legal matters, has settled the court case brought by Hulk Hogan, as well as lawsuits by several other individuals.

Although Denton didn’t disclose the size of the settlement in his statement, The Wall Street Journal reported it had agreed to pay Hogan (real name Terry Gene Bollea) $31 million to end the lawsuit.

That’s a fraction of the $130 million originally awarded to Bollea by a Florida jury, which found Gawker had violated his right to privacy by publishing part of a sex tape he asserts was made without his knowledge by his friend Todd Alan Clem, better known by his radio DJ handle “Bubba the Love Sponge.”

The judgment forced Gawker Media to declare bankruptcy and sell most of its portfolio of sites to Univision, while Gawker.com itself ceased publication. Denton declared personal bankruptcy in August.

By accepting the smaller sum, Bollea heads off any lengthy continuation of the trial in a court of appeals, whose outcome might be unfavorable, especially if the court decided to admit evidence that was ruled out by the judge in the first case.

Denton had previously expressed confidence that Gawker would prevail on appeal, citing evidence — unheard in the first trial — that Hogan was in fact aware that Clem had wired his bedroom to record his own sexual encounters. Plus, that he would be recording Hogan’s encounter with his wife.

Denton also claimed that Hogan’s lawsuit was actually intended to prevent publication of another video, in which he is heard using racist language.

As part of the settlement, Gawker Media has also agreed to permanently remove two other stories from the Web, both concerning subjects who later sued Gawker for defamation, with financial support from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who also backed Hogan’s lawsuit.

Following Hogan’s initial victory over Gawker earlier this year, it emerged that Thiel had bankrolled the lawsuit because of a longstanding grudge against Gawker Media, whose now-defunct Valleywag blog outed him in 2007.

In his blog post, Denton noted that even a victory on appeal would not have ended the saga, given Thiel’s deep pockets.

“For Thiel, an investor in Facebook and Palantir, the cost of this exercise is less than 1% of his net worth and a little additional notoriety. The other protagonists – including Hulk Hogan and A.J. Daulerio, the author of the Gawker story about him – had much more at stake. That motivated a settlement that allows us all to move on, and focus on activities more productive than endless litigation.”

For his part, Thiel stated: “It is a great day for Terry Bollea ,and a great day for everyone’s right to privacy.”