If the fate of Gawker is any indication, the multiplying sex crime probes involving Harvey Weinstein are just the beginning of the disgraced studio head’s legal problems.
As the number of Weinstein accusers - women who are alleging Weinstein harassed them, groped them or sexually assaulted them - has swelled to more than 50, Legalist - a startup backed by Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and possibly the world’s best-known gay conservative (sorry, Milo) - has offered a $100,000 bounty to any victim with a “valid sexual harassment claim” against the disgraced movie mogul, according to the New York Post.
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Harvey Weinstein
Legalist – which bills itself as “the first AI-powered litigation finance firm” — has made similar offers in the past, including last month when it announced it would pay for legal filing fees related to the massive Equifax data breach. The credit-monitoring bureau has been hit with no fewer than 30 federal lawsuits, 23 of which are class actions, after disclosing that its negligence allowed hackers to infiltrate its systems and abscond with the sensitive financial information of 143 million Americans. Criminal action has also been threatened against several of Equifax’s senior executives who cashed out of options before the company announced the hack, raising questions about whether they knew and improperly traded on the information.
Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, famously funded Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea’s defamation lawsuit against Gawker, a suit that led to a $140 million penalty, ultimately forcing the company to sell itself to Univision.
Peter Thiel
Deadline Hollywood pointed out that the latest Thiel-Weinstein news comes on the heels of Charles Harder’s exit as Harvey Weinstein’s attorney. Harder had represented Thiel in the Gawker case.
While Legalist’s history of capitalizing on national tragedies raises the suspicion of cynicism, Eva Shang, one of Legalist’s founders, says the company’s motive is a genuine interest in the case, not opportunism. She said the company has made some offers in other previous cases that were higher than $100,000. As the Weinstein saga has unfolded, she said, it revealed real needs on the part of those pursuing complaints. “Especially as a female founder,” she told Deadline, “as I read these reports of eight cases of settlements being paid to women, for very modest amounts and without a single case being filed, it seemed like a situation where we could help women get the justice they deserve.”