Let me get this right, a VC partner with degrees from Cornell and Stanford signed an agreement, paid 1/4 and then refused to honor the rest of the contract and now its extortion. This story sounds like the making of a juicy book.

"He filed a countersuit on Monday, March 15 in response to the suit filed by Ms. Baptiste, 35, on March 8."

Monday was March 14th. When the small facts are wrong, readers naturally question the large facts, as reported. It does your good paper a disservice not to have a good copy editor.

Yes, let's dismiss the entire article since one date is incorrect. Ridiculous...

A couple of things jump out at me:

1. It doesn't make a lot of sense as to why he would have ever agreed to pay her $40M unless he did something wrong to her...unless he's so rich that a divorce would have cost him a lot more than that, I guess, or his judgment was really impaired. Maybe he's so wealthy that it was worth it to him to not have to deal with exposing the affair and the salacious allegations.

2. His cross complaint alleges that after making the first installment, she kept trying to blackmail him. If this is the case, and is supported by texts/emails (they agreed not to contact each other any more in the $40M agreement to avoid exactly the continuing extortion scenario), I can understand why he wouldn't want to make the additional payments. He was buying peace and didn't get it.

[part removed. Sorry, we don't have time to research these allegations in another case from the 1970s.]

Bottom line is that if she felt she was being horrifically abused, stop seeing him, call the police, certainly don't continue writing love letters. He has not behaved perfectly or used good judgment in this situation, but I feel extortion and blackmail are far, far worse things to do.

"a VC partner with degrees from Cornell and Stanford signed an agreement, paid 1/4 and then refused to honor the rest of the contract and now its extortion. "

Extortion is not relevant to his education and documentation of extortion does not make it less illegal. Extortion is doing something you don't want anyone else to find out and then having a witness blackmail you to keep it private.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense as to why he would have ever agreed to pay her $40M unless he did something wrong to her."

Paying to keep the silence an affair with a stripper for a decade and a half while being married 3 times with 5 kids and holding an important job that probably pays over a hundred million dollars from an entity that relies on its credibility makes sense to me.

Drama fun says

"Let me get this right, a VC partner with degrees from Cornell and Stanford signed an agreement, paid 1/4 and then refused to honor the rest of the contract and now its extortion.

Here is a simple question, Did Michael Goguen and his attorneys craft and produce the $40,000,000 agreement?

I posted the above comment under "Analysis" before Almanac locked the thread, so I am now using my account.

Michael Stogner, yes, from reading the legal complaints, I believe he did. But I'm not sure this is really relevant.

What is relevant, in my opinion, is he didn't just give her the money. He required that she sign the contract to get the money. She did. This means she made some promises to him also (part of any contract). The key promise she made that he is alleging she reneged on is to stop contacting him/stop extorting him.

If in the lawsuit it's proven that she did renege on this, and the jury believes it was a key part of the contract (from what I can see, it's the only thing she was actually required to do), then he is justified in not paying her the additional installments and in fact asking for the funds already paid back. (Good luck on that, by the way).

To The Almanac: not much research is required to find the Bloomingdale case (my comment that you deleted). It's famous. It's on Wikipedia. Google for "Bloomingdale mistress."

The allegation that Michael Goguen gave her the HPV virus might have something to do with him offering $40M.

He is claiming there is no test for men to determine if they are HPV positive. He would know how many sex partners he had unprotected sex with.

I personally understand how deadly the HPV virus is my daughter China died 11 months after being diagnosed with cervical cancer and HPV.