Thank you for the work you do. I am writing to you from Europe regarding a settlement I was forced to sign with a post-secondary institution in Canada. My experience highlights a glaring loophole in how public institutions use NDAs against vulnerable individuals.
I was asked to sign a lifetime NDA over a small refund. I had paid for an online certificate program delivered by a third-party partner. When the partner went bankrupt, the post secondary institution hid the bankruptcy, refused to refund the students, and deflected blame. After I fought them pro se in Small Claims Court, they agreed to refund me the tuition, interest, and court fees, but demanded a lifetime gag order and a waiver of all my human rights claims in exchange. There was no premium paid for this silence; they just gave me back the money they already owed me.
I never negotiated the NDA. It was never mentioned during the litigation. It was never mentioned during the final settlement phone call with their Senior Legal Counsel. It only appeared in the final boilerplate document at the 11th hour. I was suffering from severe flare-ups due to the stress of the case. When I objected to the lifetime clause in writing, their legal counsel refused to renegotiate, citing a policy that "the University does not revisit settlement agreements once signed."
I was given no specific deadline, but I was under immense duress. I was dealing with a severe medical condition , an impending international move, and the exhaustion of fighting a billion-dollar institution alone. I was pressured by family out of fear for my mental health. The bank refused to witness the document because they saw I was under duress and the human rights waivers were ethically compromised. I signed because I was collapsing, not because I agreed.
The impact has been profound. The NDA was designed to buy my silence for life over a trivial sum of money. It was an insult. The realization that a top post secondary institution could use a boilerplate gag order to strip a disabled student of their voice and human rights has been deeply traumatic. I am now breaking the NDA because I believe the public interest in exposing this institutional misconduct far outweighs the university's desire to hide its reputation. I am writing a memoir to expose how they use these contracts to silence vulnerable people.
