Outlaw all confidential settlement agreements

Thanks for the Nov. 3 guest column titled "Secrets protect the powerful." All confidential settlement agreements should be outlawed. They are wholly against many public policies.

I represented a mom in a Santa Clara family court case against an ex-49er. He successfully argued to the court that he is so poor he can't pay the mom's attorney fees, and she ended up with no attorneys. At the hearing on fees, when I asked him about a newspaper story that said he'd recently paid over $100,000 to a woman to prevent her from testifying against him regarding rape, he asserted the confidentiality clause of the settlement agreement and said he couldn't comment. The judge let him weasel out on this basis and gave us only an order for some part attorney fees. We couldn't afford to pay the costs to do that case, and the ex-49er never paid our attorney fees anyway.

The judge, knowing there was public interest in the case, ordered the courtroom closed. The mother is now totally isolated in court while father goes on paying his own attorney.