Saturday, January 13, 2018

I didn’t know you could do that

Are confidentiality agreements in which everyone is identified by a pseudonym legally enforceable? Couldn’t one of the parties just deny the agreement applies to him/her?
According to the draft [agreement], Ms. Clifford was referred to as “Peggy Peterson” and was represented by a lawyer named Keith Davidson. On the other end of the negotiations were other parties referred to as “David Dennison” and “David Delucia.” 
ADDENDUM (1/15/18): It occurs to me that the pseudonyms could just be place holders for the draft version of the agreement. Maybe the lawyer who drafted it decided to use pseudonyms for everyone in the draft so that if the deal fell through and there was no legal confidentiality protection and the drafts became public, Trump could deny the agreement was about him. They would substitute the pseudonyms for real names in the final agreement to make sure it is an enforceable document.

That's just my hypothesis, but it makes sense to me.

ADDENDUM 2 (1/16/18): Today's episode of Trumpcast solved the mystery. According to Jacob Weisberg, who has seen the confidentiality draft. There is an addendum to the document that would identify the the real identities of each of the pseudonymous characters.