Eight.

The number Eight. This diatribe against the overuse of nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements is brought to you by Eight. That is, against attorneys', mediators' and courts' overeagerness to seal agreements which resolve civil disputes containing credible allegations of abuse or other forms of misconduct. Additionally, against courts' reluctance to unseal such agreements in subsequent proceedings. Such reluctance can be for reasons such as a policy bias in favor of repose. Or it might be a tendency to privilege evidentiary privileges over discovery and disclosure. Whatever reasons, the balance is askew.

Eight is the number of potential lawsuits reportedly settled confidentially by movie producer Harvey Weinstein. That is eight sealed settlements among a plethora of other allegations of abuse against women as recounted in an investigative piece published by the New York Times and still another by the New Yorker. These recent reports, in turn, inspired collective shock worthy of Claud Rains.

Eight is the number that stands against the platitudinous arguments raised by a prominent attorney coming to Weinstein's defense before the board of the company he co-founded. In her email to the board, she essentially cautioned against a rush to judgment. Rather, she advised the board to "lay low" and await the accumulation of further information, including the fruits of a planned defamation suit against the Times. That planned suit was to be filed -- presumably with all of the same due temperance -- within days.

Eight are the number of times corporate attorneys had to investigate and examine claims made against Weinstein; the number of times they had to consider whether there was a pattern of misbehavior subject to repetition; the number of times counsel could weigh the potential harm inflicted on other victims against the profits to be made off what are, by all accounts, Weinstein's considerable talent and success as a movie producer.

Is eight the right number for sounding a loud alarm? If the matter is a credible witness catching Jerry Sandusky taking a shower with one of his underage charges, one is enough. If the matter is the McMartin Preschool, where scores of parents and social workers, unaware of how suggestible children are, how lies can spread, and unduly invested in the narrative of their own children's infallibility, hundreds still fall short. Sometimes the allegations themselves are or become the abuse.

Still, in this particular case, eight is sufficient symptom of something deeper. Will pausing and analyzing this number Eight change the law with respect to when courts seal such settlements? Or in ruling on requests to unseal settlement agreements or other court records? Probably not. Nor, typically, should but one case trigger wholescale change. But might it at least give judges ruling on similar matters pause? Read on.

The nature of repetitive bad behavior is that there is always a supporting reason. Otherwise such occurrences would be implausibly idiosyncratic. They wouldn't add up. There is a reason why someone might successfully operate in the crevices; whether plying candy to children, grooming teenagers from broken homes, dangling heroin before an addicted junkie, or, even, proffering roles to actresses. Structurally, someone or more, otherwise in a guardian or policing position, is inattentive, often motivated inattention. And the alleged perpetrator is so bad that at least a portion of his behavior is attributed to him being at some level of abstraction sick. While he seeks counseling or treatment, the familiar game is then on to identify the enablers who allowed the germs to go untreated, grow and spread.

Without limits, such nets can indeed be spread wide. In "Simple Lies, Vital Truths," former New York Times science writer Daniel Goleman made the case, as have others, for the significant structural role of dishonesty in holding together social relationships. He cited as instructive example, Henrik Ibsen, who made a career of crafting tragedies set in the living rooms of an emerging middle class. The conflict typically would be between one family member concealing a deeply guarded secret, another demanding fastidious adherence to truth. The latter's pursuit might either be genuinely righteous or an exercise in moral vanity. Or they could be both, such as Oedipus Rex's painful failure to heed the clues from family and retinue to lay off the subject of his own birth. The results, unheeded, can be devastating. Ugly truths dissolve the selective lies holding together the fragile narrative frame of those in the spotlight, those slightly false presumptions of their own lives, their standards, loyalties and commitments. In Yeats' words, "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

How prevalent is deceit? The typical example Psychology 101 gives to describe the evolutionary compulsion to both self-deceit and dishonesty is the sighing lover: "I will love you always," always in the moment truly believed. The logic is that no liar is more persuasive than the one who believes his own lie. The truth often staggers behind, after the sharing, exchange and management of the related genetic information, evolutionary considerations having been satisfied. The world turns. And only as iterations deviate from this central norm do we call such behavior deviant.

So where does the law ride on this carousel? As the barker who neither allows the miscreant to jam the gears in the center, or the innocent to be thrown off the periphery. Stated alternatively, there is a considerable amount of deceit, self and otherwise, that human beings tolerate when entering into compromise agreements; conceits which keep them, otherwise disoriented, centered on the ride. People are invested in their rising and falling self-worth, beliefs, relationships, careers and interests. Each may be based on truths, half-truths or less. In shaping and enforcing a compromise, then, even good faith settlement efforts are not always an exercise in truth seeking and disclosure. Settlement negotiations can be as messy as life.

On the other hand, when attorneys, mediators and, particularly, courts entirely dispense with the truth disclosing element of justice in making decisions regarding confidentiality, they become complicit in a way enforcing restrictive covenants was ultimately determined to be invidious. That is, judicial power is being used to grant privilege and power to the undeserving, while denying others a right. In this case, that right is to information so useful that it sometimes approaches the point of being necessary for a first or third party to guard against, and stopping abuse. After all, especially court related settlement processes imply an at least partially public and serious investment in vetting claims and defenses, including those that warn of problems to come.

As merely a matter of economic efficiency, Weinstein's interactions with lawyers and the law initially rendered a collective judgment that his worth to his corporation and the cinematic world justified financing his successive alleged indiscretions. He is Harvey Weinstein, you are not. As a matter of economic justice and subsequent public disclosure, the work related environment he fostered, as revealed in reported accounts, does not so much shock as it disgusts. Power is what power does. Donald Trump is president. NBC, by contrast, said to host Billy Bush, Trump's locker room banter receptacle, "You're fired!" Go figure.

Courts' decisions, then, regarding confidentiality agreements may necessarily turn on a high-minded balancing of cynicism, resignation and constraint. Yet, not one of those eight prior settlements regarding Weinstein was likely for a sufficient amount of money. And there clearly was insufficient disclosure along the way. How, from a distance, does one deduce all that? The number Eight.