They had a better chance winning Mega Millions. Some bloggers who use to work for Huffington Post sued the site because they believe they were entitled to a piece of the $315 million dollars Huffington sold to AOL. Hit the jump for the full story.
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A New York district judge today threw out a $105 million lawsuit filed by former, unpaid Huffington Post bloggers who insisted they are entitled to a chunk of the blog’s $315 million sale price to AOL.
The bloggers – Jonathan Tasini, Molly Secours, Tara Dublin, Richard Laermer, and Billy Altman – sued HuffPo last year, arguing that they served as “modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation.”
Judge John G. Koeltl, however, disagreed. HuffPo was very clear about the fact that the bloggers would be unpaid. Their payment was the exposure that a contribution to the popular website brings with it.
“Quite simply, the plaintiffs offered a service and the defendants offered exposure in return, and the transaction occurred exactly as advertised,” the judge wrote in his decision. “No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to the Huffington Post for publication and the plaintiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation.”
The bloggers were apparently OK with the arrangement until HuffPo was purchased by AOL for $315 million in early 2011. The suit claimed that HuffPo became an attractive acquisition target for AOL because of the contributions of the bloggers and they should be rewarded for their efforts. The judge, however, found that HuffPo was under no obligation to do so.
“The principles of equity and good conscience do not justify giving the plaintiffs a piece of the purchase price when they never expected to be paid, repeatedly agreed to the same bargain, and went into the arrangement with eyes wide open,” he wrote.
The bloggers tried to “change the rules of the game after the game has been played,” the judge said.
Tasini’s HuffPo author page lists about two dozen articles that deal primarily with economic issues. Tasini previously was lead plaintiff in a 2001 lawsuit against the New York Times and other media businesses that involved freelance journalists’ ownership of electronic versions of their works following publication in periodicals. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded them $18 million.
