The courts have said that in this case the company's wrongdoing is literally larger than the value of their existence ($150mm vs $100mm IIRC?), so the company should justly be destroyed.
I see a problem with a potential result where justice would not have been served simply because one party run out of funds to pay the lawyers. That is a problem with a legal system.
The problem is that Thiel's intervention is just a one-off "workaround" that fixed one case but doesn't help other similar cases.
"people with a lot of money have a big advantage in that regard" and as far as I understand, it's the exact reason why Gawker had gotten away with similar offenses multiple times already. A solution that aims to improve justice needs to ensure that a low-funded claimant can reasonably win against a multi-million company like Gawker - forbidding maintenance isn't a fix for that; it still leaves open the much, much more popular scenario where injustice is served simply because you can't afford to someone who is rich enough on their own.
This is a case that had an even playing field - before that it was a case of the rich (namely, Gawker) buying immunity through the courts.
I see a problem with a potential result where justice would not have been served simply because one party run out of funds to pay the lawyers. That is a problem with a legal system.
The problem is that Thiel's intervention is just a one-off "workaround" that fixed one case but doesn't help other similar cases.
"people with a lot of money have a big advantage in that regard" and as far as I understand, it's the exact reason why Gawker had gotten away with similar offenses multiple times already. A solution that aims to improve justice needs to ensure that a low-funded claimant can reasonably win against a multi-million company like Gawker - forbidding maintenance isn't a fix for that; it still leaves open the much, much more popular scenario where injustice is served simply because you can't afford to someone who is rich enough on their own.
This is a case that had an even playing field - before that it was a case of the rich (namely, Gawker) buying immunity through the courts.