Vulture reports Neil Gaiman has filed a demand for arbitration seeking $500,000 from Caroline Wallner for violating the nondisclosure agreement she signed with him in 2021.
Wallner claimed in a Tortoise Media interview that beginning in 2017 Gaiman pressured her to have sex with him in return for letting her live with her daughters at his property in upstate New York. Following negotiations between attorneys in 2021 Gaiman obtained a non-disclosure agreement from her in return for a $275,000 payment to help her cope with post-traumatic stress and depression following their sexual relationship. The terms of the NDA prevented her from suing Gaiman or telling anyone about her alleged experiences with him.
The NDA they signed requires that claims be dealt with through arbitration.
The Vulture article says Gaiman’s demand for arbitration accuses Wallner of breaking their NDA by sharing her story with the media, violating the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions of their agreement. He wants full repayment of the $275,000 settlement amount, plus attorneys’ fees, and $50,000 for each interview she’s given to the media.
Vulture also reports Wallner filed a claim for arbitration against Gaiman last winter, alleging that his lawyer kept videos, photos, and text messages she’d sent Gaiman, although both parties to the NDA had agreed to destroy all such materials after signing it.
Gaiman has denied to New York Magazine that he abused Wallner, and told them it was she who had initiated their sexual encounters.
This is the second legal action Gaiman is now engaged in over sex assault allegations, after a former nanny, Scarlett Pavlovich, filed a U.S. federal lawsuit against Gaiman and his former partner, Amanda Palmer, on charges of rape and human trafficking, seeking at least $1 million in damages. Gaiman has moved for dismissal of the suit on jurisidictional grounds, arguing that the alleged abuse took place in New Zealand, not the United States.
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Gaiman has found a way to appear even more guilty. NDAs can’t be used to cover illegal activity. Don’t know how well one would fare in covering up an alleged sexual harassment victim speaking out.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, is our formerly loved Gaiman.
Gaiman obviously realizes his reputations is shot, so why not get vindictive? I’m awaiting the announcement of his engagement to JK Rowling any day now.
Having found a weak spot in the bedrock, Gaiman is digging deeper
I hopety hopety hope this gets thrown out of court as a misuse of an NDA.
Andrew (not Werdna) wrote:
For some reason, I thought you wrote “airlock” — and I started imagining Gaiman trapped in the little ship from “The Cold Equations.” With a failing orbit, and without a young woman to toss out.
This quote from the article is great:
“Oh, the allegation must be true!”
Brian Jones: It’s not before a court. It’s in arbitration. I would expect the NDA identified the arbitration service to be used.
@Troyce: “I’m awaiting the announcement of his engagement to JK Rowling any day now.”
Given the nature of accusations laid against Mr Gaiman, I doubt a vocal advocate of the rights of biological women such as Ms Rowling (views now reinforced by the UK’s Supreme Court, incidentally) would have much interest in anything he wanted to offer.
@Steve: nah, this argument about her positioning doesn’t work. She goes around telling nonsensical stories about trans people that don’t protect anyone, but do contribute to the endangerment of trans people via hate crimes and deep misinformation. She contributes to a world that is very dangerous for my trans friends, especially the trans women. Also, a ‘biological woman’ isn’t a thing. This is just a super-bigoted term for ‘cis woman’ or ‘woman who was assigned female at birth’, so I’d avoid it. Sex assigned at birth doesn’t determine gender identity, and even ‘biology’ isn’t a straightforward binary (intersex people exist, all sorts of chromosomal combinations exist, all sorts of hormonal conditions exist, you can have a woman with XY chromosomes but androgen insensitivity syndrome who can even give birth if everything adds up that way). Gender identity doesn’t even develop in most humans until they’re 3 or 4 years old! That’s AGES after a sex is assigned at birth. The process of developing a gender identity is about the same for cis kids and (binary) trans kids, except in the case of the (binary) trans kids, the adults guessed wrong. However, trans people existing isn’t something anyone needs to get worked up about, unless they looooooooooooooooove fearmongering and want to be horrible to a minority population based on nonsense that they’d rather believe than the truth. How you know it’s transphobia is that she and her ilk don’t seem to worry about cis men sneaking into women’s bathrooms to attack the people in there, even though the idea of trans women doing it is EXACTLY as hypothetical. Better to assume that people are in there to use the bathroom, and that trans people are at risk in pretty much every environment.
@Steve Green
Given her vocal support for Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson, you would be extremely wrong there. Rowling is more of an egalitarian bigot these days: Hates equally trans people, asexual people, bisexual people, gay men, young women, disabled people…
However, it is certainly true she can’t marry Gaiman – she’d be done for bigamy.
@ Meredith:
I’m trying to figure out why certain people hate asexual people so much. In some cases, it has to be ignorance — either willful ignorance or someone who could be educated. (I used to be wrong about asexuality until I read about the types of asexuality.) In others, it’s simply because they have become so used to bigotry that the idea of someone enjoying a cupcake more than sex makes them fume.
@Anne: Airlock works well too!
@Anne Marble
For some, it’s because there’s a conspiracy theory going around rightwing circles that claims that asexual people aren’t asexual at all, and it’s a cover up for (content warning) cnrqbcuvyvn. Which is awful and stupid and wrong, but aside from that would at least be an understandable reason if it was true, which it isn’t. For others, like Rowling, it tends to come under the general “spicy straight” nonsense – also aimed at trans & non-binary people and bisexual people – people who aren’t “real” queer folks in their eyes (of course they also hate and try to ban “queer”, because it makes it harder for them to identify exactly what excuse they have to hate people) but are just faking it for attention and to pretend at being oppressed because they think it’s cool. Also awful and stupid and wrong, but very, very pointless.
Plus, well, easy target. Not a particularly large or well-organised or well-understood group so you can get away with bullying them, which seems to be the sole hobby/obsession of a lot of them. Not exactly used to bigotry as addicted to it – I think it gives them a rush, a high, and since most of them drive away every non-equally-obsessed-bigot friend they have it’s the only one they get.
It’s extremely tedious, honestly. I worry about the high control group aspects but maintaining any level of sympathy and empathy consistently is a bit tricky in the face of them being so extremely awful all the time.