The Washington Football Team reportedly paid a former female employee $1.6M as a part of a confidential settlement in 2009, according to a report by Will Hobson, Beth Reinhard, and Liz Clarke of The Washington Post.
The confidential settlement came after the unnamed woman accused team owner Daniel Snyder of sexual misconduct on his private plane on a flight returning from the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, according to a person that spoke to The Post under the condition of anonymity.
The previously unknown settlement comes to light as the NFL conducts an investigation into a toxic culture within the organization that Snyder has owned since 1999.
Despite agreeing to comply with the NFL's ongoing investigation, lawyers of the WFT are reportedly trying to keep the details of the settlement under wraps.
Both Snyder and the team declined to comment on the WaPo story on the settlement or allegations.
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The report from The Post claims the former female employee made "certain allegations" in April 2009, per a copy of the agreement, and was later fired. The agreement was signed on July 22 of that year by an attorney of Snyder and two other executives of the team.
The agreement did not describe the allegations, and neither Snyder nor the team acknowledged any wrongdoing.
Despite the woman being fired, she and the team agreed that her file would show that she "voluntarily resigned."
The woman, her husband, nor her attorney, did not respond to The Post's requests for comment.
The news of the settlement comes nearly five months after The Post dropped a report about 15 women detailing sexual harassment while working for the team. Snyder hired D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson to investigate the allegations made by the victims. Then, in August, 25 additional women made similar claims.
The NFL then took over the probe of the team.
According to The Post, on Nov. 9, the Washington Football Team's former general counsel, David Donovan, sued Wilkinson to stop her from disclosing information relating to a confidential settlement from 2009. The former dropped the case. A judge then ruled that some of the details from the documents should be made public, and lawyers from the WFT stepped in to keep details of the settlement private.
It isn't known if the settlement Wilkinson attempted to shed light on from 2009 that prompted Donovan's lawsuit is the same settlement agreement that The Post learned of, but Brendon Sullivan, the woman's attorney that accused Snyder of misconduct on the plane, is also involved in the case that is tied to Donovan's lawsuit.
The records in Donovan’s lawsuit describe that settlement as involving five separate parties, and the settlement reviewed by The Post also has five separate parties: the woman, Snyder, the team, Donovan and Gershman, the team's former chief operating officer who signed a letter of recommendation for the woman back in 2009 after her "voluntary resignation."
Read the full report in The Washington Post.
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