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Non-disclosure agreements have played a major role in Vince McMahon’s fall from grace. The fact that the money he paid women to hire them was not recorded as a WWE business expense forced him to temporarily step down from his roles there in 2022. And his refusal to pay the amount promised to one woman in particular, Janel Grant, filed a January 2024 lawsuit outlining the abuse and degradation she claims he forced her to endure, resulting in what appears to be McMahon’s most permanent resignation from the company’s new parent company. WWE, TKO.
But if a new Vice report That’s right, NDAs could be an even bigger part of the story of what’s to come for McMahon and WWE. That’s because several legal experts Vice’s Tim Marchman spoke to say those NDAs may be unenforceable, which would allow the women who signed them to come forward with their stories just as Grant has done.
One reason the other confidentiality agreements could be overlooked is if McMahon breached their terms like he did with Grant. Failure to pay the agreed upon sums would constitute a breach of contract on the part of McMahon, freeing the other party to share information with the public, or federal prosecutors who recently learned of it are still investigating McMahon.
The agreements also appear to have been executed without WWE’s knowledge. “A person familiar with the situation” told Marchman that the confidentiality agreements were created in secret and, in some cases, signed by McMahon on behalf of the company. Supporting this claim is the fact that WWE reiterated its profits after learning of the settlement amounts agreed upon in exchange for the signed NDAs.
NDAs also cannot be used to prevent a crime victim from pursuing criminal charges. McMahon has not yet been charged with any crimes, but the ongoing federal investigation could obviously change that.
There is also the question of the legal quality of the agreements themselves. Vice spoke with Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who represented victims of film producer and sex criminal Harvey Weinstein, who called McMahon’s confidentiality agreements “poorly drafted.”
From Marchman’s report:
Goldberg says the central problem is the agreement’s lack of specificity. His analysis coincides with that of Grant’s attorneys, who argue in the lawsuit that the NDA should be vacated because the language is so broad that it could prevent him from including WWE on his resume.
“The NDA refers to confidentiality, but there is no definition of what should be confidential,” Goldberg said. “It’s very vague. “There is usually very specific information about what should be confidential.”
Another NDA expert Vice spoke to, UC San Francisco Law Professor Jodi Short, doesn’t believe the documents will even hold up in court, and that fighting to enforce them could also lead to undesirable results for McMahon:
“It is my considered opinion,” (Professor Short) wrote in an email to VICE News, “that confidentiality agreements like the one you sent me are unenforceable under the common law contract doctrine. But there is very little case law that clearly addresses the issue, and litigating such a case would expose an individual to enormous litigation costs and risks. That’s why most people end up silenced by confidentiality agreements even if they’re technically not worth the paper they’re written on. It’s not just the paper. “It is a document supported by an extreme asymmetry of resources between the two parties.”
More to come… especially if these experts are right.