"Behind Peter Thiel's Plan To Destroy Gawker"

Forbes:

It gets weirder. According to multiple sources familiar with Harder’s arrangement, he never had any direct contact with Thiel. And, these sources claim, Harder didn’t even know who was funding the litigation until FORBES broke the news in May.

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Ayyadurai . . . says no lawyer would take his case–until he presented it to Harder. Ayyadurai won’t discuss his arrangement with Harder, but denies that any third party is paying his bills. “To the best of my knowledge, I’m not seeing any money in my account coming from Peter Thiel,” he says.

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While Harder’s firm publicly represents those two clients, FORBES has found at least two other cases–Gawker is currently a defendant in at least a dozen lawsuits–in which Harder Mirell has worked quietly behind the scenes. One involves soliciting plaintiffs in cases that, contrary to Thiel’s claims that he’s defending those who have been wronged by the site, have nothing to do with its journalism.