In a lawsuit filed Monday, Herman said the NDA is unenforceable because of a federal law that says alleged victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment cannot be barred from suing.
Herman’s complaint, first reported by TMZ, did not specify whether she had or would make such allegations against Woods. His attorney, Benjamin T. Hodas, did not respond to a message Wednesday seeking comment.
Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The attorney representing Woods in one of the lawsuits, JB Murray, said he was “not at liberty to comment.”
The court battle, which began quietly as an apparent landlord-tenant dispute in which Herman sued a trust without naming its famous landlord, sheds extraordinary light on the kind of secret deals struck by wealthy and powerful men in their dealings. personal.
And for Woods, years removed from the scandals involving serial cheating and driving under the influence of prescription drugs, the litigation has the potential to bring back unwanted scrutiny of his private life.
In October, Herman sued Jupiter Island Irrevocable Homestead Trust, which is controlled by Woods, in civil court in Martin County, Florida. expected of, (Herman) were vast and of an extraordinary nature in light of the general circumstances and the environment in which she lived.
Herman alleged trust ‘agents’ convinced her to ‘pack for a short vacation and, when she arrived at the airport, told her she had been locked out of her residence’ .
Martin said trust officers “brought in a lawyer to confront her with proposals to address the wrongdoings they were doing” and refused to allow her back into the house. She claimed officers removed her belongings from the home and “embezzled more than $40,000 in cash belonging to her, making libelous and defamatory allegations about how she obtained the money.”
The complaint, which was not reported in the media at the time, did not name Woods. But in a responding filing in December, attorneys representing Woods said the golfer lived in the home with his children and argued his complaint was invalid due to an NDA requiring their disputes to be treated confidentially.
Woods’ attorneys revealed they were already in an arbitration dispute, with several potential witnesses, over Herman’s deportation demands. They argued that because her claims “arose out of the breakdown of her relationship with Mr. Woods,” she breached the NDA by filing a complaint in a public forum.
This court filing included a largely redacted copy of the NDA, signed by both Woods and Herman.
Herman has been an integral part of Woods’ public life amid his return from multiple injuries in recent years, including a 2021 car crash near Los Angeles that left him with multiple fractures to his right leg and threatened to end his golf career.