A lawsuit against golfer Tiger Woods by a former girlfriend could be the first to raise questions on the scope of a newly enacted #MeToo law.
Erica Herman said in a complaint in a Florida state court that a nondisclosure agreement she and Woods signed shortly after they began a romantic relationship should be voided under the Speak Out Act, passed late last year. The law cancels these types of pacts in cases where an NDA or nondisparagement pact was signed before allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
The agreement, which court documents show was signed in 2017, forces any disputes, claims, or controversies between the two to be resolved by confidential arbitration. But Herman is asking the Florida court to void that agreement based on the recent federal law, even though the case didn’t originate with a sexual assault or sexual harassment claim.
“While it is very obvious that the intent of the statute is to eliminate the use of nondisclosure and nondisparagement clauses in the employment or contracting context, I don’t know that the expressed text of the statute is limited to that,” said James Paretti, an employment attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Littler Mendelson P.C. “It’s an interesting case because it’s certainly not the test case I think Congress would have had in mind.”
Herman originally brought the case in October against a Woods...
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