Nondisclosure agreements and secret settlements

Nondisclosure agreements and secret settlements are presented as both practical instruments for resolving workplace-harassment claims and mechanisms that can conceal patterns of alleged misconduct. They offered some women money, privacy, and a way to leave painful disputes behind; at the same time, restrictions on speech, evidence, and cooperation could prevent future employees, regulators, and the public from learning what had happened. The book’s central distinction is between settling an individual claim and addressing the conditions that allow similar claims to recur.

How Secrecy Worked

Agreements examined by Emily Steel in her reporting on Bill O'Reilly and Fox News did more than keep settlement amounts private. Women were required to hand over recordings, diaries, emails, backups, and other evidence. Some provisions barred them, and sometimes their lawyers, from assisting other women with similar claims. A woman who received a subpoena had to notify O'Reilly’s side, giving his lawyers an opportunity to oppose her testimony. One agreement even required a woman’s lawyer to provide legal advice to O'Reilly on harassment matters. Another barred disparaging statements about O'Reilly or Fox News and prohibited the woman from responding to journalists; she also confirmed that she had not filed a complaint with government agencies.

The financial terms made the exchange stark: one alleged victim received about $9 million and another $3.25 million. A breach could put the payment at risk. The agreements thus joined compensation to silence, while transferring information and evidence to the party accused of misconduct. The underlying allegations were not adjudicated by those payments; instead, the public record that might have helped reveal repetition could disappear from view.

The restrictions were not described as unusual. Lawyers told Jodi Kantor that this was standard practice and often one of the few available ways to resolve such claims. Women might accept settlements because they needed money, wanted privacy, saw no better option, or hoped to move on without being labeled a tattletale, liar, flirt, or habitual litigant. The book therefore does not treat every agreement as a simple measure of a woman’s willingness to speak: a signature could reflect constrained choices as well as a desire for closure.

The Incentives and Gaps Behind Settlements

The alternative of suing could be punishing. Federal protections left out some workers, including freelancers and employees at workplaces with fewer than fifteen people. The filing deadline could be as short as 180 days, and federal damages were capped at $300,000—potentially too little to compensate for lost earnings or attract a strong lawyer. Settlements could seem more certain than litigation, even when their terms restricted what a claimant could say afterward.

The attorneys negotiating these cases also faced financial incentives. Many worked on contingency, receiving at least a third of a client’s award if the client was paid and potentially nothing if a case was lost in court. The result, the book argues, was a settlement industry in which some lawyers challenged extreme provisions while others accepted them or gave ground to secure a larger award. The same mechanism that delivered immediate money could leave the wider workplace unchanged.

Public agencies did not necessarily supply an alternative source of transparency. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission often kept its settlements confidential, had limited enforcement authority, and was required by its mandate to settle where possible. Information gathered with public resources could therefore remain unavailable to prospective employees trying to assess an employer’s record. The problem was not only what a private agreement concealed: official processes could also collect information without making it useful to the people who needed it.

The Miramax Agreement and Its Afterlife

Zelda Perkins and Rowena Chiu’s experience makes the human and documentary consequences concrete. After the two women resigned from Miramax, they consulted a London law firm expecting that criminal proceedings might follow. They were told that they lacked physical evidence, had not contacted police in Venice, Italy, and were facing Harvey Weinstein and a company then owned by Disney. The lawyers advised a settlement, describing it as the usual course. Perkins and Chiu said they did not want money for themselves and proposed that it go to charity, but were told that Weinstein’s lawyers were unlikely to negotiate without a financial demand.

Perkins tried to make the agreement address future conduct as well as compensation. She proposed therapy for Weinstein, a formal harassment policy and training at Miramax, and consequences if another similar allegation arose within two years. After difficult negotiations, each woman received £125,000, subject to extensive restrictions. Perkins’s agreement barred her from discussing her time at Miramax, restricted what she could tell medical professionals and her accountant, and required a list of people she had already told. She was also barred from speaking to media, including outlets that might exist in the future, and could be required to help prevent or mitigate further disclosure.

Even access to the contract was restricted. Perkins could not keep a complete copy; she had limited permission to view it at her lawyer’s office and retained only excerpts. The agreement with Chiu likewise implied that the two women could never discuss the matter again. Nearly twenty years later, Perkins brought those battered pages to a meeting with Kantor and read their terms aloud. The surviving fragments made visible how secrecy operated not merely as a ban on publicity but as a rule reaching into professional advice, personal relationships, and the women’s ability to preserve their own account.

Corporate Controls and Public Challenge

The book also contrasts settlement confidentiality with corporate measures designed to manage financial exposure. In 2015, board member Lance Maerov sought information about Weinstein’s conduct and saw a memo concerning Emily Nestor, but did not press for more details. Weinstein’s contract established a code of conduct and escalating financial penalties if the company had to pay settlements arising from his misconduct: $250,000 for the first settlement, $500,000 for the second, and increases up to $1 million. The contract also allowed termination for misconduct. Maerov regarded the arrangements as sufficient to protect the company from liability, a priority distinct from ensuring that women would not be harassed or harmed. A system can price future settlements without making the underlying information public or preventing the conduct.

After the Weinstein story appeared, Perkins became a public critic of confidential settlements. She was among the first women to break a settlement nondisclosure agreement publicly, while withholding the specific experience and identity of Chiu, whom she had tried to protect. She challenged the use of hush money and secrecy in the media and before the UK Parliament; Weinstein did not pursue her legally. Her action turned a contract intended to restrict disclosure into a focus of public debate, but it did not itself change the law.

The aftermath remained incomplete. Perkins did not know whether settlement laws in the UK would change. At McDonald’s, the company began strengthening policies, adding manager training and a hotline and planning posters explaining how workers could report harassment, but Kim Lawson had not yet seen those changes in her own store. The episodes give the concept its wider significance: secrecy may settle a dispute for the parties who sign, yet its costs can fall on people who never saw the agreement and cannot use the hidden history to judge risk, report a pattern, or demand prevention.