Lawyers for Gawker Media will face off against attorneys for former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan earlier than expected, according to a document filed in a Florida Court on Friday.
Representatives from Gawker Media and Hogan — real name Terry Bollea — will next meet up in early October to determine the next steps for an ongoing legal tussle that has been raging since 2012, after Gawker Media published an edited sex tape showing Hogan having sex with the ex-wife of shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge Clem.
The revised court date comes days after a superior court judge granted a last-minute stay of a $100 million invasion-of-privacy trial, which was originally scheduled to begin last week. Shortly after the trial was pushed back, a judge ordered a case management hearing for Oct. 20, which has since been moved up to Oct. 1.
The rescheduled hearing means representatives Gawker Media will have slightly less time to prepare for a legal battle they say could be changed by new evidence gleaned from a separate lawsuit against the FBI. While Gawker has been fighting Hulk Hogan in court, it has been waging an open-records battle against the bureau and the Executive Office of United States Attorneys to obtain more than a thousand investigative documents, along with three DVDs that reportedly show Hogan having sex with Heather Clem.
The FBI is currently reprocessing the DVDs, which the bureau acknowledged in a court filing Friday contained some inconsistencies.
