Tiger Woods and his then-girlfriend Erica Herman are pictured at the US Open last year.
Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Tiger Woods’s ex-girlfriend Erica Herman claims he evicted and abused her, but she has an NDA.
Woods’s desire for privacy has come up in tabloids, court filings, even the name of his yacht.
A new law invalidating NDAs that prevent speaking about sexual abuse could pierce Woods’s privacy.
When security guard John Davis slipped on some stairs at a Florida mansion in 2010 and hurt his knee, he filed a lawsuit. The defendant, Christopher Hubman, wasn’t a name most people would recognize.
But to people who knew Hubman’s role as the trusted lieutenant of golf superstar Tiger Woods, the real target of the lawsuit was obvious: Woods himself, whose net worth at the time had just surpassed half a billion dollars. Even though Davis was injured at Woods’s mansion, Hubman handled the suit as an officer of the trust controlling the estate, and everyone in the case took pains to play down the connection. At one point in a deposition, Davis referred to a witness as “Tiger’s personal assistant,” before catching himself — “Oh,” he said. “She’s the client’s personal assistant.”
Davis wasn’t the first person asked to keep Tiger Woods’s name out of his mouth, and according to a $30 million lawsuit filed earlier this month by Woods’s ex-girlfriend Erica Herman, he wasn’t the last.
Herman is suing to nullify a nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2017 while dating Woods, with her legal filings citing laws that allow people with allegations of sexual abuse to invalidate such contracts. Her lawyers are arguing that the agreement needs to be scrapped to proceed with another suit against Woods, related to her claim that Woods used a ruse to wrongfully evict her from his house. As it stands, the agreement is so broad, her lawyers said in a filing, that she is “unsure what other information about her own life she may discuss, or with whom.”
The battle over Herman’s NDA is a window into Woods’s longtime obsession with privacy. In both public statements and personal dealings, he has repeatedly sought to limit and control what people know about the real life of the world’s most famous golfer — leveraging legal barriers, financial trusts and his immense wealth to keep things quiet. Even his former personal chef has an NDA.
As public scrutiny and tabloid speculation intensify around Woods once again, the carefully constructed walls around his private life face arguably their biggest test since the infidelity scandal that imploded his public image and professional career over a decade ago.
Tiger Woods doubles down on privacy
Woods built his brand in the late 1990s and early 2000s on the carefully crafted image of a clean-living athlete, armed with a thousand-watt smile and the ability to turn golf tournaments into must-see TV. His winnings on tour and prolific sponsorship deals netted him hundreds of millions of dollars, with his spotless public persona making him ideal for marketers.
But Woods’s reputation came …read more
Source:: Business Insider
