Arkady
President
A former Playmate alleges that she had a nine-month affair with Trump around the time Trump's youngest kid was born:
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/16/pl...-with-trump-raises-serious-security-concerns/
The interesting part is that one of Trump's friends, who controls the National Enquirer, bought exclusive rights to the story, then did nothing with it -- a practice called "catch and kill," where wealthy people buy up rights to stories they want buried, under the guise of wanting to publish an exclusive account, and then use those contract rights to keep the story from seeing the light of day.
Typically the contracts include liquidated damages. If you're unfamiliar with that legal term of art, it's a way that the parties to a contract can stipulate, ahead of time, what the damages will be if one of them breaches. That's important for "catch and kill" because having to prove actual damages would be impossible, since they were never planning to publish, and so they didn't lose any economic value by losing their exclusive control of the story.
Presumably Trump's buddy will now sue, and the Playmate will settle. The idea, from Trump's friend's perspective, will be to frighten other women from coming forward the same way, by letting them know it'll come with a price-tag larger than what they can hope to profit on by selling the story to someone else.
If she's smart, though (and assuming the affair really took place), she should welcome such a lawsuit, and rebuff any overtures to settle it. There's a legal concept called the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. If Trump's bag man led her to believe he was actually going to publish the story, when his real plan was to kill it, that's bad faith. If she can make that case, she can not only depose him, she can also demand access to any communications between him and Trump, or people in Trump's circle, about the affair (all of which would be relevant to the question of whether the contract was entered in good faith). She could even potentially depose Trump himself about it. If she can get a court to agree to put Trump under oath to ask about the affair, suddenly people will not only let the liquidated damages go, but they'll be offering to pay her to make it go away.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/16/pl...-with-trump-raises-serious-security-concerns/
The interesting part is that one of Trump's friends, who controls the National Enquirer, bought exclusive rights to the story, then did nothing with it -- a practice called "catch and kill," where wealthy people buy up rights to stories they want buried, under the guise of wanting to publish an exclusive account, and then use those contract rights to keep the story from seeing the light of day.
Typically the contracts include liquidated damages. If you're unfamiliar with that legal term of art, it's a way that the parties to a contract can stipulate, ahead of time, what the damages will be if one of them breaches. That's important for "catch and kill" because having to prove actual damages would be impossible, since they were never planning to publish, and so they didn't lose any economic value by losing their exclusive control of the story.
Presumably Trump's buddy will now sue, and the Playmate will settle. The idea, from Trump's friend's perspective, will be to frighten other women from coming forward the same way, by letting them know it'll come with a price-tag larger than what they can hope to profit on by selling the story to someone else.
If she's smart, though (and assuming the affair really took place), she should welcome such a lawsuit, and rebuff any overtures to settle it. There's a legal concept called the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. If Trump's bag man led her to believe he was actually going to publish the story, when his real plan was to kill it, that's bad faith. If she can make that case, she can not only depose him, she can also demand access to any communications between him and Trump, or people in Trump's circle, about the affair (all of which would be relevant to the question of whether the contract was entered in good faith). She could even potentially depose Trump himself about it. If she can get a court to agree to put Trump under oath to ask about the affair, suddenly people will not only let the liquidated damages go, but they'll be offering to pay her to make it go away.
