Clinton Settles Paula Jones Lawsuit for $850,000 (Flashback)

President Clinton reached an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones yesterday, agreeing to pay her $850,000 to drop the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to the worst political crisis of his career and only the third presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.

After more than 4 1/2 years of scorched-earth legal warfare, Clinton and Jones brought a sudden end to the case with a four-page deal in which he acknowledged no wrongdoing and offered no apology. The agreement, which will be filed with a federal appeals court considering whether the lawsuit should go forward, requires the president to pay within 60 days.

Robert S. Bennett, Clinton's chief attorney in the case, said the president still insists Jones's allegations of a crude proposition in a Little Rock hotel suite seven years ago "are baseless" but agreed to make the payment in the interest of finally putting the matter behind him.

Just hours before the settlement was inked yesterday, Starr sent new evidence to the House Judiciary Committee stemming from a witness in the Jones case, Kathleen E. Willey, who also accused Clinton of an unwelcome sexual advance.

The extraordinary case came to an extraordinary finale, with the defendant agreeing to pay $850,000 even though the plaintiff originally only asked for $700,000 when she filed suit -- and even though the case was dismissed without a trial.

$850,000 sexual harassment settlement versus $35,000 severance pay...

There are a couple of differences.

The Cain accusers hadn't file a lawsuit, so the settlement with them would have normally described the payment as something other than a 'settlement.' The agreement would state that the NRA was not admitting to any wrongdoing, and if the woman was terminated, you would call any amounts paid to her "severance pay," even if others who were terminated or you quit under joint agreement at the time didn't receive severance pay.

The second is the amounts paid are apples and oranges for a couple of reasons. The first is that Jones had already filed a lawsuit. The price of settlement already goes up at that point. The second is that Clinton fought the lawsuit vigorously - one key issue being that Jones was not harassed because she received a promotion after being summoned to Clinton's suite and shown Little Clinton. (Paula Jones' position was that she had been threatened with job security - because as she left, Clinton asked how Paula Jones' boss's boss was doing, and remarked that he was a good friend of Clinton's. Paula's attorneys said that remark should be taken as a veiled threat and the judge decided that a jury should be able to hear the testimony and make that determination).

So Jones had run up hundreds of thousand of dollars in legal bills over a couple of years of litigation. Clinton couldn't settle the lawsuit for $35K. Paula Jones wasn't gong away for $35K because she already owed her lawyers more than that. My understanding is that her attorneys did not take the case on a contingency basis.

So "$850,000 sexual harassment settlement versus $35,000 severance pay" is apples versus oranges.

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