Twenty cases.
One method.

Verdict: $140 million  ·  Settlement: $31 million (Nov. 2, 2016)  ·  Funder: Peter Thiel, $10 million, disclosed May 2016 after verdict

The paradigm case for funded lawfare against a publisher. Gawker filed for bankruptcy after the verdict, Gawker.com was shut down, and the remaining sites were sold. Thiel, whom Gawker had outed in 2007, told the New York Times his funding was “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” and called it one of his “greater philanthropic things.” Levi’s 2017 article was written in its shadow. Whatever one thinks of Gawker’s journalism, the structure — an undisclosed third party with a personal motive financing a suit designed to end a publication — is the thing to watch for.

TIME, May 2016 ↗ · Guardian, Nov. 2016 ↗ · First Amendment Watch deep dive ↗

Cited here for one order. After the plaintiff disclosed at deposition that an “Alan Dershowitz Legal Defense Fund” existed and refused to identify its supporters, Magistrate Judge Patrick M. Hunt ordered disclosure of who was funding the suit, crediting CNN’s argument that a political or competitive funder “dramatically undercuts” a claim of reputational injury. The order shows courts can require disclosure case by case — and how much has to go right for that to happen.

Freedom of the Press Foundation ↗

Damages sought: $15 billion  ·  Initial complaint dismissed: Sept. 19, 2025, four days after filing  ·  Refiled: Oct. 2025  ·  Amended: Aug. 28, 2026

Judge Merryday dismissed the original complaint as “unnecessarily lengthy and digressive.” The refiled and amended complaint adds specific alleged inaccuracies in articles and a book by two Times journalists. The amount sought is the point: a $15 billion demand is not a damages calculation but a message to every newsroom about the cost of a story. The case will test whether Sullivan’s actual-malice standard does its work at the pleading stage.

NYT, Aug. 28, 2026 ↗ (news report)

Damages sought: $10 billion  ·  Filed: July 2025  ·  Dismissed: April 2026  ·  Defendants: Dow Jones, Murdoch, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, two reporters

Over the Journal’s report on a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. In a 17-page opinion, Judge Gayles found the complaint came “nowhere close” to alleging actual malice. The refiled complaint alleges “glaring failures in journalistic ethics.” Naming individual reporters as defendants is itself a lawfare signature: it puts personal exposure on the people who did the reporting.

Politico, May 28, 2026 ↗ (news report)

Casino magnate Steve Wynn lost under Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute for failure to show actual malice, then asked the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan. The Court declined. Included as the most recent direct attack on the doctrine that makes the headline suits above losable. Sullivan itself was decided against a backdrop of 17 libel suits seeking more than $288 million from the press covering the civil-rights movement.

Reuters ↗ · Sanders, Conn. L. Rev. (2026) ↗ · Berisha v. Lawson (2021) — Thomas and Gorsuch opinions ↗

X sued CCDH over research reports on hate speech on the platform, alleging breach of contract and unlawful data collection. Judge Breyer dismissed under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, finding the suit targeted CCDH’s speech. X appealed to the Ninth Circuit. A note on where we stand: this coalition’s founder was named in CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” report and was a plaintiff in Finn v. GEC, in which CCDH was a defendant. We list this dismissal as the correct outcome anyway. The principle that research about a company is protected speech is the same principle that protects research about CCDH.

NBC News ↗ · Ninth Circuit docket ↗ · EFF amicus brief ↗

Filed November 2023 after Media Matters reported that major-brand advertisements appeared beside white-nationalist content on X, prompting an advertiser exodus. X alleges the reports were engineered; Media Matters says they were accurate. On July 23, 2026, the court ordered X to produce posts X itself had deleted while shielding user-deleted posts under the Stored Communications Act. Now in its third year. Whatever the merits, the forum choice — a Texas court for a D.C. nonprofit and a California platform — and the duration are the features to note.

Courthouse News, July 23, 2026 ↗ (news report)

After the Media Matters reports on X, the Texas Attorney General opened an investigation and issued a civil investigative demand. Media Matters and reporter Eric Hananoki sued in D.C., alleging First Amendment retaliation. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction: Paxton was subject to personal jurisdiction in D.C. because he purposefully directed his actions there; the complaint stated a justiciable retaliation claim with concrete, ongoing harms; and the district court did not err. The template — a state officer’s investigative power turned on a publisher within days of a critical story — is the regulator instrument in its purest form.

D.C. Circuit opinion (Justia) ↗

Dr. Meryl Nass’s license was suspended in 2023 over her public statements on COVID-19 treatment and policy, and the board ordered a psychological evaluation as a condition of reinstatement. In August 2026 the chief judge rejected the board’s quasi-judicial immunity argument — the order “did not bear any of the hallmarks of judicial proceedings” — and held that requiring the evaluation could constitute a “retaliatory sanction for disfavored speech,” noting the record contained no suggestion of substance abuse or a physical condition and that the board appeared to regard her opinions as the product of “not independent thought but a mental illness or mental condition.” Other claims were dismissed.

Nass, Aug. 24, 2026, quoting the order ↗ (party account; we have not independently obtained the opinion)

California’s AB 2098 made it “unprofessional conduct” for a physician to convey “misinformation” about COVID-19 to patients. Physicians sued; a district court preliminarily enjoined the law in January 2023, finding “scientific consensus” unconstitutionally vague; the legislature then repealed it before the Ninth Circuit ruled. The licensing instrument, defeated — but only because the plaintiffs could afford to sue first.

NCLA case page ↗ (counsel account)

Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador; a U.S. court later held the judgment unenforceable as procured by fraud. When he refused to surrender his devices in the ensuing civil proceedings, the judge drafted criminal contempt charges; the U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute; and the judge, under Rule 42, appointed the private firm Seward & Kissel — which acknowledged having done work for Chevron as recently as 2018 — to prosecute him. Donziger was confined to his home from August 6, 2019, tried without a jury, and sentenced in October 2021 to six months. The UN Working Group found his detention arbitrary under three categories, describing the judge’s drafting of the charges as “a staggering display of lack of objectivity and impartiality.” The Supreme Court declined to hear his Appointments Clause challenge. The point for this section: the private-prosecutor mechanism exists in U.S. law, and it has been used against a lawyer whose offense was litigating.

UN WGAD Opinion 24/2021 ↗ · American Prospect ↗ · NYU L. Rev. on the cert. denial ↗

An application made without notice by a prosecuting party for the arrest of Sayer Ji and the seizure of his devices, citing his lawful U.S. speech, public associations, and a regulatory complaint he had filed. He was not a party and was not told. The judge declined the application in full. We list it by the description in the author’s public statement and no other; see the case study for the chronology and the statement’s reservations. Included here because it is the clearest documented instance of the foreign-forum instrument reaching an American over speech published in America.

A Statement on Due Process, Dec. 29, 2025 ↗

Ofcom fined 4chan £20,000 in October 2025 — the first penalty under the Online Safety Act — and by March 2026 a total of £520,000 for failing to implement age checks and to respond to information notices. 4chan and Kiwi Farms sued in Washington. The court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, writing that the plaintiffs sought to use American courts “as a sword against Ofcom rather than as a shield.” The fines remain uncollectable in the United States; the constitutional question remains unheard. Full treatment on the Foreign Censorship docket.

Reuters, Sept. 16, 2026 ↗ · BBC on the £520,000 fine ↗ · Reuters on the first fine ↗

Freedom of Information data reported by The Times put arrests under the two communications offences at more than 12,000 in 2023 — roughly 30 a day — with fewer than one in ten leading to a sentence; 292 people had been charged under the Online Safety Act through February 2025. Lucy Connolly, jailed for 31 months over a single deleted post, was released August 21, 2025. There is no official national count; the figures are FOI compilations and should be read as such. These are not lawsuits, but they are the enforcement backdrop against which any foreign application concerning an American’s speech is made.

Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2025 ↗ · BBC on Connolly ↗ · British Resilience Index on the data’s limits ↗

The precedent for a legislative answer. An American author was sued for libel in London by a Saudi financier over a book that had only a handful of sales in England; she refused to defend and a default judgment was entered. New York responded with the first anti-libel-tourism statute in 2008, and Congress with the SPEECH Act in 2010, which bars U.S. courts from recognizing foreign defamation judgments inconsistent with the First Amendment. It reaches judgments, not regulatory fines, orders, or arrest applications — the gap the GRANITE Act is designed to close.

CRS report on the SPEECH Act ↗ · RCFP on New York’s 2008 law ↗

The first use of the Espionage Act against a publisher for publishing. Seventeen Espionage Act counts and one computer-intrusion count; seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy and five in Belmarsh; a plea to a single count with credit for time served. The case is treated at length on the Fifth Estate page. It is on this docket because the plea leaves the precedent intact: a publisher can be charged for receiving and publishing classified information.

NYT, June 25, 2024 ↗

Federal prosecutors sought records of roughly 1,900 LinkedIn interactions among six users, including a journalist, in an unspecified national-security leak probe. A district judge granted the request on June 3, 2026 and issued a non-disclosure order barring LinkedIn from notifying the users; LinkedIn appealed two days later. The Fourth Circuit heard 40 minutes of public argument before Judges Wilkinson and Wynn, then a sealed session. The reporter learned of the case, if at all, from the press. It belongs here as the current live example of coercive process over reporting, conducted without notice to the speaker.

Politico, Sept. 15, 2026 ↗ (news report)

Journalist Alex Berenson alleged Biden-era officials induced Twitter to suspend him. Claims against Pfizer and a former adviser were dismissed in July 2025 and the remainder that September; on appeal, the Justice Department settled in May 2026, citing the executive order “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” A court used as it should be: to hear a speaker’s claim against the state.

DOJ release, May 13, 2026 ↗ · Bloomberg Law on the dismissal ↗

Listed together because they are the mirror image of lawfare: not a court used as a weapon, but a courthouse door that would not open. In Murthy, 6–3, the Court held that states and social-media users lacked standing to challenge federal pressure on platforms, without reaching the merits. In Finn, the coalition’s own case, dismissal with prejudice was a serious procedural loss; the court did not reach standing, causation, the truth of the censorship allegations, or an evidentiary merits judgment. Every remedy on the action page is written with both in mind.

SCOTUSblog: Murthy ↗ · Finn case history ↗