UNITED STATES
The Conversation via CBS News
August 7, 2018
By Elizabeth C. Tippett
Elizabeth C. Tippett is an associate professor at the School of Law at the University of Oregon.
If you were worried that the #MeToo movement might fade away, fear not. It has been carved into one of the most immovable objects in human history.
Legal boilerplate.
And not just any boilerplate. But the language in giant merger agreements, used when one company is buying out another company.
Basically, corporate lawyers have been adding a sentence that forces companies to disclose allegations of sexual harassment. On Wall Street, it has come to be known as the “Weinstein clause.”
That’s new. In my years as an employment lawyer, I worked on more than 50 corporate acquisitions. The work somehow managed to be both boring and stressful, as I rapidly sifted through masses of personnel documents to figure out what needed to be disclosed.
Although it was common to disclose ongoing lawsuits or threats of litigation, “allegations” or even internal complaints of harassment were not on anyone’s radar.
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