From The Daily Beast: Ugly Battle Over ‘Shitty Media Men’ List Ends in Six-Figure Payout:
A writer named on The Shitty Men in Media list has settled his lawsuit for a six-figure sum with the woman who created the infamous spreadsheet, Confider has learned.
The Adderall Diaries author Stephen Elliott sued columnist Moira Donegan for defamation after being accused of rape, sexual harassment, and coercion on the Google spreadsheet that was widely shared at the height of the #MeToo movement and accused upwards of 70 men of sexual misconduct.
“The lawsuit had gone 4 and a half years and would have gone 4 more years I think before going to trial,” Elliott told Confider via email. “They were doing everything possible to avoid defending their views in court so when they offered enough money I agreed to settle.”
Elliott said Donegan wanted a confidentiality clause which he did not agree to, describing it as a “Harvey Weinstein thing to ask for.”
In 2018, we discussed the list here.Report
If the lawyer put in more than 5 hours of work per year, this guy wouldn’t see any cash at the end, right?Report
Usually lawsuits like this are done contingency, with the lawyer getting 1/3 of the winnings.Report
Aside from the contingency aspect of it, the market rate for experienced trial lawyers in the Eastern District of New York is in the $400/hour range. It’s likely that in over four years his lawyers put in over 1,000 hours of work, so if they were billing by the hour, instead of taking a cut of the recovery, the settlement would have to be in the half-million or more range to be worth doing. And the client probably couldn’t afford to pursue the case on a straight hourly fee basis.(I currently have a case in the Eastern District of a kind that would normally be contingent, but the client — or, more precisely, the client’s husband — is loaded. Judging by the uneconomical way her lawyers are litigating the case, and the substantial risk of loss, she must be paying them on an hourly basis or, perhaps, some hybrid fee arrangement.) Elliot’s lawyers’ cut probably short-changes them, but that’s the risk in contingency cases.Report
The flip side of how GamerGate ended.Report