Abstract
It took a billionaire and a corporate bankruptcy for the once-overlooked third-party litigation financing (“TPLF”) to grab the public’s attention in 2016, when Hulk Hogan filed suit against Gawker Media for invasion of privacy. Hogan’s salacious affair became the backstory once the public learned PayPal founder and Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel provided $10 million in litigation funding to back Hogan’s lawsuit as a revenge play against Gawker. Hogan secured a $140 million judgment against Gawker, pushing the company into bankruptcy. TPLF is a type of financial interest whereby a lender provides money or capital to a borrower in exchange for part of the borrower’s potential legal recovery. If the lawsuit fails, the financier has no right to collect against the borrower personally because the debt is secured by a portion of the lawsuit’s recovery. TPLF falls into two broad categories: commercial (“Commercial TPLF”) and consumer (“Consumer TPLF”). This Comment suggests a different path forward, contending that Commercial and Consumer TPLF are inherently different and thus carry different risks best addressed by different policymaking institutions: federal courts for Commercial TPLF and state legislatures for Consumer TPLF.
Recommended Citation
Jack Lorkovic,
Protecting Plaintiff Interests from Third-Party Influence: A Policy Framework to Address the Rise of Third-Party Litigation Financing,
105 Neb. L. Rev. 199
(2026).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol105/iss1/9