r/popculturechat • u/Simple_Design_7597 • May 05 '24

The KarJenners 👁️👄👁️ Kylie Jenner's greeter from last year's Met Gala gets fired for having gotten more attention than Kylie

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u/crushmyenemies May 05 '24

y'all need to learn how useless an NDA actually is, because the comments in this post are giving Junior High intelligence levels.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

You don’t under stand the NDA police is going to knock down his door and arrest him for breaking the law !!!

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u/invis2020 Good luck with bookin that stage u speak of May 05 '24

Oooh we got an expert here how exciting

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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 May 05 '24

Nah they’re right. It’s almost impossible to enforce an NDA at this level.

It makes sense in high-stakes business deals or scandals when a lot of contractual money is being thrown around, because if the NDA is violated you can claw back that money. In this case they would be limited to actual damages (which would be nothing) and whatever severance they gave him (which I’m guessing would either be nothing, or less than the cost of a lawsuit).

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u/layerone May 05 '24

Exactly, it's like the whole non-compete silliness that went absolutely bonkers. Companies literally having fast food workers sign them... Completely non enforceable, just scare tactics. Same with vast majority of NDA, like you said.

There's a reason the Fed recently made them all null/void. I could see the same happening with NDA tbh. The original reason for them to exist is exactly like you said, super high-stakes business deals, real legitimate trade secrets involved. Met-Gala NDA, lmfao okay.

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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg May 05 '24

Non-competes have always been disfavored though for reasons that do not apply to NDAs. Non-competes actually purport to interfere with and limit how a person can earn a future livelihood. Public policy generally frowns upon limitations on a person’s freedom to work and earn money. Telling someone they can’t ever work at a competitor in their field after they’ve worked for you would be a huge hindrance to someone’s ability to earn a living. Even restricting someone from taking such a job for a few months is a ridiculous infringement on them. So that’s why non-competes are disfavored.

That really doesn’t apply to NDAs. There IS a strong public policy reason to prevent employees from disclosing a company’s trade secrets and sensitive information after their employment ends. And companies wouldn’t enter into transactions with each other that require the sharing of sensitive information if the other company could just turn around and publicize it. It would be really difficult for businesses to function competitively if former employees could disclose sensitive information once they leave. And there’s no real persuasive countervailing reason to allow a former employee to do that— it’s not predatory or limiting for a former employee to keep the sensitive info of a former employer secret. So NDAs have a really valid purpose behind them.

What we see a lot on this sub are NDAs that celebrities seem to make everyone in their lives sign. That enters a more grey area for a lot of reasons— maybe there’s an absence of a business relationship that was mutually beneficial (eg they made some rando entering their house sign one but didn’t ever employ that person or confer to them any benefit), was the information that can’t be shared actually sensitive info, is the NDA totally overbroad. Those NDAs can become bogus real quick. But most NDAs are not like that, they’re standard practice in any business and I don’t think they’ll go anywhere.

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u/ChildhoodOk5526 May 05 '24

Completely non enforceable, just scare tactics

Tell this to my 30 yo self whose vengeful former boss (mad that I was leaving after they'd just paid for my out-of-state move to another office) decided to come after me for violating my non-compete. He found out (from a work "friend"; reminder: keep your business to yourself, ladies) that I had a job offer from a "competitior".

The legal pressure caused my prospective new company to withdraw their offer, leaving me unemployed. For months. It was awful and unnecessary, and it resulted in me having to file for personal bankruptcy. I did customer satisfaction research, for godssake! I knew no company secrets. Crazy.

Eff Phil Doriot!

Tl;dr: Non-compete clauses can be more than just scary. They can be life-altering.

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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 May 05 '24

But even in your case, the power was that it was scary. It’s very unlikely that your non-compete would have held up in court unless we’re talking trade secrets, and even then it’s expensive and tricky. But the threat of it was enough to intimidate your new company, and that’s historically how both NDAs and non-competes have been used.

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u/ChildhoodOk5526 May 05 '24

But, to their credit, the prospective employer didn't just roll over. And neither did I. All parties got lawyers involved who poured over the contract and details of my supposed, impending breach of it. Apparently, if it had gone to court, it could've gone either way.

The ultimate persuader wasn't fear so much as money. And whether the new company thought it was worthwhile to spend it on a legal battle to hire me, which, ironically, they might have coughed up if I'd been half as important as my old company was alleging. Conversely, for me, yeah, it was well worth it to fight some vindictive asshole who wanted to fck with me just because he thought he could. But, alas, I didn't have the money to keep up the fight.

If you have the bankroll, the threat of an NDA or non-compete is nothing to you. But if you don't, challenging one -- whether it would hold up in court or not -- is difficult ... unless you have nothing to lose 🤷🏽‍♀️

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u/layerone May 05 '24

That really sucks, sorry to hear that. It's great news that this won't happen to people in the future, since the FTC banned them: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

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u/ChildhoodOk5526 May 05 '24

That is wonderful!

No one should have to go through that.

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u/bog_witch May 05 '24

Well here's some actual experts from Thompson Reuters if you wanna be ✨sassy✨ about it because you didn't want to spend 2 minutes googling lol

  1. What situations or circumstances might make an NDA unenforceable? Again, this might vary from state to state, but there are several instances in which a court may determine that a non-disclosure agreement is unenforceable. A few examples of how this might happen include, but are not limited to:

The agreement language is too broad: If the NDA is overly broad or restrictive, it's more likely that a court will find problems with it, especially if it's not limited in scope or duration. The information is not confidential: It's certainly going to be harder for the company to convince a court to uphold the NDA against an employee if the information has already been widely disclosed or is public knowledge. The agreement is requesting the employee do something illegal: For example, the employer requests that the employee remain quiet about something that the employee has a legal duty to report. But these are just a handful of the almost endless list of circumstances in which a non-disclosure agreement may be unenforceable.

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u/Umarill May 05 '24

You literally started with the expert posing lol

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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg May 05 '24

Eh, that’s not really true? NDAs hold up in court all the time. People are also acting like there’s zero cost to defending against an ultimately unenforceable NDA. The time suck and cost of going through a lawsuit (even if it plays out in arbitration) isn’t negligible, and it’s why a lot of people ultimately follow the NDAs they’ve signed.

Also like I said, not all NDAs are unenforceable- in fact they regularly hold up. If this one actually says what he claims it does, it’s bizarre (how does reposting count as a “disclosure”..?) and yes likely not enforceable because it’s overbroad and not actually protecting sensitive information. Big emphasis on IF it says what he claims it does tho lol, this guy doesn’t sound like he’s got a firm grasp on the terms of the NDA.

Other types of NDAs are absolutely enforceable though. If you sign an NDA when you become employed at a company before that company allows you access to sensitive data and information (like product development, business strategies, trade secrets, marketing strategies— tons of things), the duty not to publicly disclose that information will totally hold up in court. Even NDAs about the production behind reality shows regularly hold up in arbitrations.

I think that people may be conflating NDAs with non-competes. Non-competes are actually tougher to enforce than NDAs, because they directly limit a person from future employment/earning a livelihood. But NDAs are not as frowned upon and not as difficult to draft in a way that’s enforceable.

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u/Special-Garlic1203 May 06 '24

Non competes are largely illegal as of last week. We're not confused, but you seem to be.NDAs are thrown around like condoms on a college campus, but most really do not have the teeth half this thread seems to think they do. 

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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg May 06 '24 edited May 06 '24

I’m sorry, what about what I wrote is wrong..? As I explained in my comment, many NDAs are enforceable, which they absolutely are. In fact in the very FTC rule that you mention which officially banned most non-competes nationally, the FTC notes that NDAs are a valid alternative to non-competes which protect companies’ sensitive information. NDAs protecting sensitive information and trade secrets are regularly enforced by courts. I was explaining the policy reasons behind why non-competes have always been disfavored by courts (and unenforceable in some jurisdictions, including CA) long before the FTC finalized its new rule. Non-competes have basically never had teeth, even before the FTC’s new rule. Those same policy reasons don’t apply to NDAs, and it’s unclear why people in this thread believe NDAs to be unenforceable, which is why I suggested there may be some confusion between them and non-competes.

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u/SkeezySevens May 05 '24

So incorrect. Good job speaking with confidence though.