the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally." Collective action On 22 June 2013, unpaid interns brought a Fair Labor Standards Act action against Gawker Media and founder Nick Denton. As plaintiffs, the interns claimed that their work at sites io9.com, Kotaku.com, Lifehacker.com, and Gawker.TV was "central to Gawker's business model as an Internet publisher," and that Gawker's failure to pay them minimum wage for their work therefore violated the FLSA and state labor laws. Although some interns had been paid, the court granted conditional certification of the collective action. In October 2014, a federal judge ruled that notices could be sent to unpaid interns throughout the company who could potentially want to join the lawsuit. A federal judge later found that the claims of interns who joined the suit as plaintiffs were outside the statute of limitations. On March 29, 2016, a federal judge ruled in favor of Gawker, noting that the plaintiff had correctly been deemed an intern instead of an employee and was the primary beneficiary of his relationship with Gawker Media. Unionization In June 2015, Gawker editorial staff voted to unionize. Employees joined the Writers Guild of America, East. Approximately three-quarters of employees eligible to vote voted in favor of the decision. Gawker staff announced the vote on May 28, 2015. Condé Nast executive prostitution claims In July 2015, Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent published an article attempting to "out" a married executive at Condé Nast, over a gay porn star's alleged text correspondence. The post sparked heavy criticism for outing the executive, both internally and from outsiders. Denton removed the story the next day, after Gawker Media's managing partnership voted 4-2 to remove the post—marking the first time the website had "removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement." Gawker's Executive Editor and Editor-in-Chief resigned after the story was dropped from Gawker's website. According to The Daily Beast, "a source familiar with the situation said Gawker ultimately paid the subject of the offending article a tidy undisclosed sum in order to avoid another lawsuit." Daily Mail defamation lawsuit In September 2015, Gawker published a first-person narrative by a former employee of British tabloid The Daily Mail which was critical of the journalistic standards and aggregation policies for its online presence. Daily Mail sued for defamation, stating the