Gawker Media boss Nick Denton is feuding with former employee and editor Noa Gottlieb — who bought the porn site, Fleshbot, from Denton a year ago and who Denton says has refused to fork over $100,000 as part of the deal.
Gottlieb, in papers filed last week in her countersuit against Denton, claims that she doesn’t owe the money because Denton breached the sale contract and engaged in “fraud.”
At the heart of the dispute is $100,000 in missed payments stemming from a promissory note Denton had given to Fleshbot — and which Denton demanded that Gottlieb was required to pay in four equal quarterly installments as part of the sale agreement in January 2012.
So far, Denton claims he has collected zilch from Gottlieb for the business Denton founded in 2003.
“Fleshbot had made none of the $25,000 payments and despite repeated requests for payment, still owes Gawker $100,000 plus interest,” Denton claims in his own legal briefs filed in the court downtown.
Not so fast, claims Gottlieb (aka Lux Alptraum), in her countersuit, in which she asked a judge to toss out Denton’s claim against her — essentially arguing that Denton had forgiven the debt on the promissory note.
Late yesterday, Denton’s legal eagle, Cameron Stratcher, said a judge had denied Fleshbot’s motion to dismiss the original suit.
But there are still plenty of unresolved issues.
Gottlieb accuses her former boss of “breach of contract” and “fraud” because he reneged on promises to turn over the URLs or domain codes to the new owner of Fleshbot.
In the eyes of some, the URLs are arguably the most important asset of any website.
The suit maintains that the URLs were not held by Fleshbot LLC, but by a shell company incorporated in Hungary — owned separately by Denton.
That company, Blogwire Hungary Szellemi Alkotast Hasznosito KFT, operates out of Gawker’s offices on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan, the suit claims.
Gottlieb claims she tried to get the shell corporation to turn over the domain names but was unsuccessful.
Gottlieb, who joined Gawker in 2007 and was named editor of Fleshbot in October 2008, said the presence of the porn and non-porn businesses housed side-by-side became increasingly problematic as Gawker’s other businesses took off.
In 2009, the payroll and human-resource consulting firm, ADP Total Source, told Denton that it would not work with Gawker until the parent company was free of any adult entertainment websites, claims Gottlieb.
At that point, Denton spun off the porn site into its own limited liability corporation, but it was only a paper separation since “all of the technological and administrative work done in connection with Fleshbot web site was handled by Gawker employees, and Fleshbot maintained its principal place of business at the same address as Gawker,” the suit alleges.
Two years later, there was still a very clear link between the gossipy websites and the porn site — even though Denton was insisting the businesses were at arm’s length to appease skittish advertisers, according to legal papers.
“Though 100 percent of Fleshbot equity was owned by Denton, it was Gawker employees — compensated by Gawker and not Fleshbot or Denton — who were responsible for Fleshbot’s day-to-day operations,” the suit claims.
Gawker employees didn’t want to work on the porn site. “This was the source of significant internal strife at Gawker,” according to the suit.
In addition to Gawker, Denton and Blogwire, the suit also names as defendants Gawker’s COO Gabrielle Darbyshire and Francis Scott Key Kidder, who was the head of editorial operations.
Denton’s lawyer told Media Ink, “We consider the [counter]suit meritless.”
Mr. Fix-It
Bill Wackermann was moved aside from the highly profitable and prestigious Glamour to the less prestigious Condé Nast Traveler to make way for the surprise arrival of Connie Anne Phillips — but tonight he still gets a nice sendoff from Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive.
Wackermann, long viewed as the company’s Mr. Fix It, at least is going out on a winning note.
After slumping earlier in the year, his page tally took a big jump in July, plumped up by the Spanish-language spin-off, Glam Belleza Latina, that was mailed to some subscribers.
A strong August left it with 826 ad pages — just two pages off a year ago.
His winning streak continued with the crucial September issue, which just closed.
His plus-31 ad pages pushed the month to 220 ad pages compared with only 189 last year. Wackermann’s year-to-date total rose to 1,047 pages — meaning he is going out with a year-to-date 3 percent bump in ad pages from last year.
He really earned his “Mr. Fix It” title — at least for the moment. Wackermann’s party tonight is being called, “nine years, 16,000 pages.”
He may need it at his new job. The last publicly released numbers in Media Industry Newsletter showed CNT was off 3.4 percent in ad pages for the year to date, to 473.8.