Ensuring Digital Signature Legality for Interview Non-Disclosure in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Interview Non-Disclosure in United Kingdom

now The Daily Telegraph has published details of allegations of sexual harassment racism and bullying made against the philip green it's after the top shop owner ended legal action against the paper so philip strenuously denies any wrongdoing well specialist importance lawyer Matt Jindal joins her sir from South London thank you for joining us in this afternoon so the non-disclosure agreements signed by the accusers are very much in place exactly what are they and are they legally binding non-disclosure agreements which are commonly known as settlement agreements and our agreements where normally employees or ex employees and waive their rights to bring claims and they normally get a payment and there's normally a clause in these agreements that they buy by confidentiality obligations and therefore that the terms and the background and it remains confidential what are the consequences for breaking that clause well if employees are X employees break these clauses then the employer could sue for damages for breach of the obligations under the agreement and presumably how much the employer sees varies from case to case yes and it depends on obviously you know the terms of the clause and you know what the damages could be yeah it's important to stress that there are some exceptions about disclose disclosing so these confidentiality obligations for example can't exclude people from going to the police or from reporting wrongdoing and two regulators so there are some exceptions to what a sense of these are NGOs NDA's and something that is and particularly for the rich and powerful because I guess that is the perception is that is there a truth and that's or is that very much a myth I think these NDA's allure settlement agreements they use widely across across the board really from you know for small businesses to large employers and they're obviously agreements that employees and the employers enter into and they need independently employee needs independent legal adviser as well to go through the agreement so they're something that employers you know pushing boys to sign without them having legal advice there are any examples where these MBAs have been broken and an employer hasn't been able to pursue legal action against the accuser I'm not aware I myself have any particular examples but obviously you know there will be cases where employees breached those obligations and the employers do take action obviously there are clauses in the agreement which which often may not necessarily be enforceable and which often uses a deterrent for people to not go to the press or to third parties and so there are you know these clauses do exist and obviously there are there will be occasions when they're breached and just give us some sense of firm who I mean how the process works in order to get these NDA's signs I mean who signs on the dotted line ultimately and who gives a green lights a term they can't be breached well it would be the employee and their lawyer that would sign the agreement and then the employer would also sign so it would be employee employer or ex employee and the legal adviser and the legal advisors obligations for specific statutory obligations to go through the terms of the agreement and also explain the person's inability to pursue employment claims so it's very strict that the the solicitor or legal adviser has to go through the terms of the agreements and explain very clearly all the implications and what about if the accuser decides to go overseas gets a new job abroad I mean does the NDA still apply if they're in another country well I'm not sure about all the different jurisdictional laws but certainly if an agreement is signed here and it's governed by UK law for example then obviously the UK law would apply okay mattj injeel thank you for your time thank you