Attorneys have tentatively reached a $44 million agreement to resolve more than a dozen civil lawsuits accusing the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, according to an attorney in the case and a person familiar with the deal.
The arrangement was discussed Thursday at a hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, where the amount of the proposed settlement wasn't disclosed.
Robert Feinstein, an attorney for the committee of unsecured creditors of Weinstein Co., the independent movie studio founded in 2005 by Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath that the parties planned to meet with the case's mediator next week to finalize details.
"The end goal of that mediation is to do a global settlement of the class action and all the tort claims against the Weinstein Company," Feinstein said.
"I don't want to overstate the likelihood, because there's still some challenges to the plan," he said, but he said that the offer was "globally approved by the mediation parties" and that "I think we owe it to the process to give this a try."
The proposed deal would pay the women $30 million, reserving $14 million to cover legal fees, according to a source familiar with the negotiations who spoke to NBC News and the NBC entertainment news program "Access" on condition of anonymity.
The deal was reached during bankruptcy proceedings for Weinstein Co. The sprawling negotiations encompassed attorneys for Weinstein, Weinstein Co., the company's unsecured creditors and the New York attorney general's office.
The New York attorney general's office, which sued Weinstein Co. for gender discrimination last year, initially pushed for a victims' fund of up to $90 million before the plans faltered after the company went bankrupt.
Under the terms of the proposed settlement, which would be paid through insurance funds, no party would admit wrongdoing, the source said. The arrangement is separate from criminal charges against Weinstein in New York, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Dozens of women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing, and articles published in 2017 in The New York Times and The New Yorker detailing his alleged behavior helped spark the #MeToo movement. Weinstein denies all of the civil and criminal allegations, his attorneys have said.
