Tiger Woods’s ex-girlfriend Erica Herman alleges sexual harassment
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Tiger Woods’s ex-girlfriend claimed in a court filing that the golfer began dating her when she was his employee, forced her to sign a nondisclosure agreement to keep her job and used a trick by an attorney to break up with her and kick her out of their home. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The allegations stem from an escalating court dispute that is heading to a hearing Tuesday to determine whether the ex-girlfriend, Erica Herman, is bound by the NDA and barred from suing Woods in open court. Woods’s lawyers have argued Herman is in violation of the agreement, which requires them to settle all disputes in confidential arbitration.
Herman’s lawyer has argued that her court claim against Woods was covered by a federal act negating NDAs in relation to alleged victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment. The lawyer, Benjamin Hodas, wrote in a new filing Friday in circuit civil court in Martin County, Fla., that Woods predicated her employment, and later her housing status, on her relationship with him, which constituted sexual harassment.
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“Tiger Woods, the internationally renowned athlete and one of the most powerful figures in global sports, decided to pursue a sexual relationship with his employee, then — according to him — forced her to sign an NDA about it or else be fired from her job,” the new filing reads. “And, when he became disgruntled with their sexual relationship, he tricked her into leaving her home, locked her out, took her cash, pets, and personal possessions, and tried to strong-arm her into signing a different NDA.”
Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, did not respond to an email seeking comment Monday. One of Woods’s attorneys in the dispute, J.B. Murray, did not respond to messages seeking comment. In court documents, Woods’s attorneys have called Herman a “jilted ex-girlfriend who wants to publicly litigate.”
In Friday’s filing, Hodas said that stance by Woods’s representatives was “taken from the classic playbook of powerful men accused of sexual harassment who respond by belittling and insulting their victims.”
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The filing alleges Woods began a romantic relationship with Herman in 2015, years earlier than he had previously said, and when she was director of operations for his restaurant, The Woods Jupiter.
On Aug. 9, 2017, according to a copy of a contract filed by Woods’s attorneys, Herman signed an NDA, and their relationship became public from that point forward, with Herman attending Woods’s tournaments and posing for photographs with him and his children. Hodas pointed out that the NDA was signed on the same day Woods signed a plea deal shelving a much-publicized DUI case against him.
Hodas wrote that Herman does not recall signing the contract filed in court. But the lawyer noted that the document appeared to link her relationship with Woods and her job at the restaurant. The contract states Herman was signing the NDA in “consideration for the opportunity to continue to ... spend time with Eldrick ‘Tiger’ Woods” and “be employed at the restaurant known as The Woods Jupiter.”
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“Mr. Woods was Ms. Herman’s boss,” Hodas wrote. “On Mr. Woods’s own portrayal of events, he imposed an NDA on her as a condition to keep her job when she began having a sexual relationship with him. A boss imposing different work conditions on his employee because of their sexual relationship is sexual harassment.”
Emails filed in court by Woods’s attorneys show that when presented with an NDA in 2017 by Christopher Hubman, Woods’s chief financial officer, Herman responded that her “only concern” was “if by chance [Woods] does something that brings our relationship to an end, do I automatically [lose] my job?”
“I don’t have any problems with what’s in the document because I wouldn’t go public or use anything I know to hurt him or the kids but with my whole life in his hands now I would want to have some kind of control over my future in the business,” Herman wrote. “If something happened 5-10 years down the road I don’t want to be in my 40s heartbroken and jobless.”
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Hubman replied: “In my mind, your employment by The Woods Jupiter and your personal relationship with TW are two separate items. I don’t think the end of one automatically impacts the other ... although I admit it could be complicated.”
Herman ultimately quit working at the restaurant, according to Hodas, under pressure from Woods to “devote herself full-time to their relationship and caring for him and his children.” But in October 2022, the court filing claims, Woods told Herman they were going to the Bahamas, and she packed a small bag. But when they got to an airport where a private jet was waiting, according to Herman, Woods instead told her to speak with his attorney and left.
That lawyer — who the court filing says calls himself “Ray Donovan with a pen,” referring to the fictional fixer on television — “told her that she was not going anywhere, would never see Mr. Woods again, had been locked out of the house, and could not return,” Hodas claimed. “She would not even be able to see the children or her pets again.”
Hodas claimed Woods’s attorney employed “brutish and high-pressure tactics” to try to get Herman to sign an additional NDA and arbitration agreement, but she refused. Michael D. Holtz, a California attorney who promotes himself on his website as “Ray Donovan with a pen,” did not respond to a request seeking comment.
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Hodas argued that by breaking Herman’s tenancy agreement with Woods’s trust that owns the mansion where he and his children live, Woods “made the availability of her housing conditional on her having sexual relationship with a co-tenant” — which Hodas called sexual harassment.
In October, Herman sued the trust, alleging that she was unlawfully evicted from her home and that the trust’s “agents” had “misappropriated in excess of $40,000 in cash that belonged to her” while “making scurrilous and defamatory allegations about how she obtained the money.”
After Woods’s attorneys responded that she could not sue because of the terms of her NDA, Herman filed another lawsuit seeking to invalidate the agreement. Hodas has cited a federal act — the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, or EFAA — that was signed into law by President Biden last year. The law invalidated NDAs that caused disputes in those cases to be handled in confidential arbitration.
“While Ms. Herman may well be entitled to compensation under a sexual harassment claim, she has not brought this case to recover a cent in damages from Mr. Woods,” Hodas’s filing reads. “But the EFAA still protects her.”
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Source: The Washington Post
