The failed 2015 internal effort to restrain Weinstein

The failed 2015 internal effort to restrain Weinstein was a collision between two kinds of oversight: Bob Weinstein’s attempt to require his brother to pursue treatment, and board member Lance Maerov’s effort to examine company records and limit corporate liability. Both men saw the expiring executive contracts as leverage. Both encountered resistance. By October, Harvey Weinstein had secured a new contract, while the proposed controls addressed potential costs to The Weinstein Company more directly than the risk of further harm to women.

The opening created by the crisis

In the weeks after Ambra Battilana Gutierrez’s public accusation, the planned sale of The Weinstein Company’s television division had collapsed, a substantial business blow. Bob feared that his brother could inflict further damage on the company. The Weinstein brothers’ contracts, along with those of other senior executives, were due to expire at the end of 2015, creating a moment when their terms could be renegotiated. Bob decided to use that opening to press for in-depth professional treatment addressing Harvey’s sexual behavior.

That summer, Bob sent David Boies an email with a letter for Harvey. He described wanting the two men to return with a responsible plan. The letter acknowledged that Harvey had begun seeing Dr. Evans and Dr. Carnes, but treated that beginning as insufficient by itself. Bob asked for the exact nature of the treatment, how often Harvey would see each doctor, and how many years he would commit to continuing. He also asked whether Harvey would join group therapy, at what frequency and for how long, and requested a session with each doctor to explain Bob’s own experience of his brother.

Two efforts at oversight

Maerov’s intervention came through a separate route. Appointed in 2013 to one of the company board’s three independent seats, he was expected to act as a watchdog. His employer, advertising company WPP, Goldman Sachs, and other major investors wanted him to protect shareholders. Initially, Maerov understood the rumors about Weinstein’s conduct toward women as possible infidelity, not as evidence of a broader pattern. His main concerns were financial misconduct and the company’s wider dysfunction.

The public groping accusation changed his assessment. Like Bob, Maerov feared that Weinstein’s behavior could represent a pattern and expose the company to liability. As a board member involved in renewing contracts, he could seek to inspect Harvey’s personnel file. Weinstein refused to let him see it, and Boies offered to review it himself and report any potential legal problems to the board. Maerov distrusted this arrangement: Boies appeared at different times to represent the company or Weinstein, leaving uncertain whose interests a review of sensitive material would protect.

On July 1, 2015, Maerov obtained a brief, unofficial look at the file. At breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, accountant Irwin Reiter and two other executives described complaints of verbal abuse made over the years. Reiter then slipped Maerov several pages, including a memo about Weinstein’s conduct toward Emily Nestor. The executives feared that Maerov might leave with the papers, so he read them at the table. For him, the memo supplied evidence of the kind of conduct he had suspected; it did not, however, lead to a sustained examination of the record.

Pressure, concessions, and a new contract

The attempt to scrutinize Weinstein was unusually difficult for Maerov. During the contract negotiations, Weinstein and Boies operated in tandem, according to Maerov’s account: Weinstein applied pressure, while Boies argued and negotiated. At a movie premiere, Weinstein reportedly threatened to punch him. When Maerov complained, Boies’s response characterized his account as exaggerated and questioned his suitability to negotiate with Weinstein. Boies also offered an alternative review: prominent corporate lawyer Rodgin Cohen examined the personnel file and reported that it contained nothing that could create liability for the company. Maerov later learned that Cohen’s son was a junior employee at The Weinstein Company hoping to enter the film business.

Maerov also did not pursue details when Boies acknowledged that Weinstein had paid settlements to women, emphasizing that company funds had not been used. Nor did Maerov act on the Nestor memo he had seen. He later minimized its significance, recalling that it looked like a poor copy and that it had come through colleagues rather than directly from Nestor. These choices narrowed an inquiry that had begun with the possibility of a pattern into an assessment of what the company could be held financially responsible for.

In October 2015, Harvey signed a new contract that preserved his authority for years. The agreement established a code of conduct and financial consequences if the company had to pay settlements arising from his misconduct: Weinstein would cover the costs, with additional penalties rising from $250,000 for the first settlement to $500,000 for the second and eventually $1 million. The contract also allowed for his termination for misconduct. The escalating schedule anticipated possible future allegations, yet treated the financial consequences as a principal means of managing the danger. Maerov’s stated objective had been to shield the company from liability, not to guarantee that women would be safe from harassment or harm; once he believed the organization had legal protections and additional financial controls, he considered his work sufficient.

A private promise and an unresolved failure

Bob’s demand for treatment followed a different path but also lost its enforceable force. He had wanted the requirement written into the contract, alongside the code of conduct and penalties. Boies persuaded him that putting the information in writing would give Maerov leverage to gain greater control of the company. Bob accepted instead a private promise that Harvey would continue intensive treatment for sex addiction. Because it was not part of the contract, the promise could not be enforced through the company’s formal rules. Bob later described repeated assurances and delays, and his eventual exhaustion with the process.

Reiter, meanwhile, had explored ways with Bob to separate Harvey from the company, only to see Bob retreat. Reiter had taken the risk of showing Maerov the memo, but the disclosure did not dislodge Harvey. Although the company offered to bring him back full time at twice his salary—$650,000 a year—Reiter declined. He remained at the company in essentially the same job he had held since age thirty, while privately expressing deep reservations about working under Harvey.

The limits of the 2015 effort became stark in the later account of a board conference call on October 3, 2017, after The New York Times’ investigation was imminent. Maerov had insisted that the board meet because Weinstein had hired lawyers and Lanny Davis’s firm to respond to the story without informing the directors. Boies then outlined what the article would report: eight to twelve settlements, perhaps more, and said Weinstein might not remember how many payments he had made. The 2015 contract had created penalties for settlements, but those provisions had not prevented the accumulation of allegations and payments. The attempted intervention had identified both the need for scrutiny and the means to impose financial terms; its failure lay in leaving women’s protection secondary, the records contested, and treatment dependent on a promise Bob could not compel.