When can an NDA be legally broken?

There are many reasons that a contract can be void or voidable. Wikipedia will give you a good rundown. The reasons which apply to contracts generally will apply to NDAs specifically. This answer focuses on non-disclosure agreements.

Various legal authorities and courts have found contracts to be void in the following circumstances:
1. Crime
2. Torts
3. Public safety
4. Public Health
5. Matters of substantial public concern

The Model Penal Code prohibits what it calls compounding. The crime involves accepting payment in exchange for not reporting a crime.

Chief defense counsel released from contempt sentence in USS Cole case

Brig. Gen. John Baker was serving a 21-day sentence that began Wednesday after the military judge in the USS Cole case found Baker in contempt of court in a showdown over who has the authority to release attorneys of record. The 50-year-old career military officer, who is the second highest-ranking lawyer in the Marine Corps, is chief defense counsel for military commissions.

The release was ordered just before a hearing in Washington, D.C. on a habeas corpus unlawful detention petition filed by a group of criminal defense lawyers. However, the sentence could be re-imposed later, and Baker’s contempt conviction was not vacated.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth declined to rule further on Baker’s case during the hearing Friday, saying the military official in charge of the war court made a “wise decision” by releasing Baker. But he implied that if the military didn’t take further action in a “reasonable” amount of time, he might further review the case later.

“I’m not going to stand down. I’m simply going to give the military time to clean up its own act,” Lamberth said. “And its first step was a good one.”

.. Baker has refused an order by the USS Cole case judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, to rescind his decision to release three civilian defense lawyers from the case. At issue is whether he or Spath actually has the power to let war court lawyers of record go. Spath says that’s the role of a judge. Baker says in the case of military commissions, the tribunal system set up after the Sept. 11 attacks, it is solely his domain.

Bobby Sticks It to Trump

our Russia-besotted president does share some traits with Dostoyevsky’s spiraling protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov.

.. Both men are naifs who arrive and think they have the right to transgress. Both are endlessly fascinating psychological studies: self-regarding, with Napoleon-style grandiosity, and self-incriminating. Both are consumed with chaotic, feverish thoughts as they are pursued by a relentless, suspicious lawman.

.. We are in for an epic clash between two septuagenarians who both came from wealthy New York families and attended Ivy League schools but couldn’t be more different — the flamboyant flimflam man and the buttoned-down, buttoned-up boy scout.

.. One has been called America’s straightest arrow. One disdains self-promotion and avoids the press. One married his sweetheart from school days. One was a decorated Marine in Vietnam. One counts patience, humility and honesty as the virtues he lives by and likes to say “You’re only as good as your word.”

.. Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio says the president has been lying reflexively since he was a kid bragging about home runs he didn’t hit. He gets warped satisfaction from making up stuff, like those calls from the head of the Boy Scouts and the president of Mexico that the White House just admitted never happened.

Back when he was a Page Six playboy, Trump even invented two P.R. guys to play on the phone with reporters, so he could boast about himself three times as much, including fictitious claims of dating Carla Bruni and being hit on by Madonna.

He is never deterred by the fact that he can be easily caught. But considering he survived the “Access Hollywood” video, it’s no wonder he has a distorted sense of what is an existential threat.

A White House adviser told me recently about how scary Mueller’s dream team is, and how Jared Kushner should be nervous. Every time Mueller adds a legal celebrity to his crew, the music gets cued for an “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Dirty Dozen” array of talent.

  • One lawyer helped destroy the New York City mafia;
  • another helped bring down Nixon;
  • another tackled Enron;
  • others are experts on foreign bribery and witness-flipping.

As GQ’s Jay Willis wrote, “If these people were coming for you over a parking ticket, you’d be thinking about liquidating your life savings.”

.. Trump does not yet seem to fathom that Mueller is empowered in a way no one else is to look at all sorts of things. This isn’t some tiff over a casino, where Trump can publicly berate opposing counsel and draw him into a public spat. Mueller won’t take the bait.