Editor’s note: This story was updated Wednesday afternoon with a brief statement from Mike Isabella Concepts.
WASHINGTON — The plaintiff in a sexual harassment lawsuit against celebrity chef Mike Isabella is now asking a federal court to invalidate non-disclosure agreements that employees were required to sign.
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, attorneys for Chloe Caras said that even wait staff making just $3.33 an hour plus tips were required to sign the lifetime NDA. Any breach of “confidential information,” attorneys allege, would subject those employees to a penalty of $500,000 plus attorneys’ fees.
“The NDA defines ‘confidential information’ to be any ‘details of the personal and business lives of Mike Isabella, his family members, friends, business associates and dealings,'” according to the statement from the firm Katz, Marshall and Banks.
In addition, Caras’s attorneys allege that employees weren’t advised of their rights to report sexual harassment or other misconduct to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or other agency.
One of those attorneys, Debra Katz, called the agreement “grossly overbroad.”
“NDAs have been abused by employers to intimidate employees from speaking out about sexual harassment and to conceal these types of egregious workplace abuses,” she said in the statement.
“Employees should not be gagged for life, upon threat of financial ruin, as a condition of earning a paycheck. Nor should they be forced to silently submit to sexual harassment, upon threat of legal action, if they report it.”
Caras had served as the highest-ranking woman in Isabella’s organization, Mike Isabella Concepts, before she was fired in 2017. She filed the sexual harassment suit last month. Since the allegations went public, the Washington Nationals severed their relationship with Isabella, and RAMMY nominations for two of his restaurants were rescinded.
Mike Isabella Concepts runs about a dozen restaurants throughout the D.C. area, including the 41,000-square-foot Isabella Eatery food hall at Tysons Galleria.
According to a report Tuesday in The Washington Post, Isabella said the agreements were meant “to prevent any news about our restaurant openings from leaking to press before we were ready to announce it.”
“NDAs were absolutely never used to intimidate employees,” Isabella told The Post.
In an email to WTOP, Mike Isabella Concepts said, “This matter will be resolved through the courts.” They declined to comment further.
