A former girlfriend of onetime Google CEO Eric Schmidt will have to arbitrate her claims that he stole business from under her, sexually assaulted her twice during their relationship and used his company background to hack into her email as well as her online computer files, a judge has ruled.
Plaintiff Michelle Ritter was a Columbia University law and MBA student when the two met in 2020 and she proposed to him a potential investment in a sports tech startup she had been developing, according to her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit.
On Monday, Judge Michael Small granted Schmidt’s motion to compel arbitration. The judge said that Ritter’s effort to avoid an arbitration agreement she signed rested principally on the claim that it was invalid and unenforceable due to the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act.
Signed into law by President Biden in March 2022, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act voids mandatory arbitration agreements for workplace sexual harassment or assault claims and allows survivors to sue in public court and applies retroactively to existing agreements.
“To be sure, plaintiff has asserted claims of sexual assault and sexual harassment…,” the judge wrote. “However, the EFAA applies only to arbitration agreements that were entered into before the sexual assault disputes and/or sexual harassment disputes arose.”
In Ritter’s case, the reversed occurred in that the alleged sexual assault and sexual harassment disputes arose before the parties entered into the arbitration agreement, according to Small, who scheduled a post-arbitration status conference for March 2, 2027.
Ritter, 31, represented herself during the hearing. In her suit filed Sept. 8, her allegations include sexual battery and harassment, domestic violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, violation of the state Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, wiretapping and recording confidential communications.
Schmidt, 70, is a businessman and former computer engineer who was Google’s CEO in 2001-11 and the company’s executive chairman in 2011-15.