The jurors who sided with Hulk Hogan in his lawsuit against Gawker believed he was emotionally distressed by the publication of his sex tape.
The 62-year-old wrestler has been awarded $140 million damages after the website published footage of him getting intimate with his friend’s then-wife, and the six-member jury put themselves in his shoes when considering how much he should receive in damages.
Juror Paula Eastman told ABC News: "If we were all in the same circumstance, how would we feel about it? "And, emotionally, we would have all been pretty devastated."
The jurors were warned by the judge in the case not to bankrupt Gawker co-founder Mark Denton, ex-editor A.J. Daulerio or the company itself, but they admitted they wanted to award Hulk more in order to "send a message" to the "arrogant" site staff.
Juror Shane O’Neil told the New York Post newspaper: "There was a lot of potential for it to go up a lot higher."
Paula added: "A lot higher.
"The arrogance behind [posting the sex video] isn’t within the framework of the law. It just blows me away."
Fellow juror Robin Young said of the posting of the tape – which Hulk was unaware had been recorded – that it was "malicious".
Robin said: "This was malicious. So we felt we needed to send a message."
And the jurors also hit out about "arrogant" Denton.
Robin said: "There was something about the level of arrogance. He definitely likes himself.
"We could kind of feel that he thought we were Florida Hulk Hogan fans… that we’ve got Hulk Hogan-mania T-shirts in our closet and this kind of stuff. And if you go around the room, you’ll find most of us… come from other parts of the country and other parts of the world, and so that kind of intellectual New York snobbism sort of came across."
Hulk Hogan jurors felt he was ’emotionally distressed’
