( CNN ) -- In the midst of a swirl of rumors about Herman Cain , a woman who accuses him of sexual harassment holds a news conference . Her attorney , Gloria Allred , employs her studied grimace as Sharon Bialek tells of an encounter 14 years ago that , if true , constitutes an unreported sexual assault . At his own press conference the next day , candidate Cain issues a heated denial , having earlier hinted at a willingness to take a lie detector test . How would the court system , America 's formal arbiter of truth , evaluate the competing claims ? The courts would refuse to even consider them . In the legal world , courts scrupulously enforce statutes of limitations on accusations of improper or criminal conduct . The rules exist because it is unfair to force the accused to defend against a charge of ancient vintage . Witness memories and evidence have grown stale and the courts believe that evidence is best evaluated and most reliable when it is fresh . The rare exceptions to this rule almost always involve the abuse of children and particularly heinous crimes like murder . The law provides no sanctuary for women who seek to resurrect sexual harassment claims from as distant as 14 years in the past . But Herman Cain now exists in the realm of politics and not the courtroom . Cain must find a way to prove his innocence to a skeptical public regarding a suspiciously large number of claims for which the statute of limitations has long since expired . Unfortunately , finding a path to the truth of sex harassment charges can often be a perilous journey . Today , most professionals structure their interactions with employees of the opposite sex carefully to avoid even the hint of sexual impropriety . Glass-walled office suites are the norm , insuring that employee relationships remain open to public view . The world of `` Mad Men 's '' Don Draper and his blatantly sexual overtures to female employees is mostly a thing of the past . Today 's sexual harassment is far more subtle . Although legitimate claims deserve compensation , the sex harassment litigation story has a seedy underside . False complaints are sometimes rewarded with generous monetary awards and then hidden from public view with confidentiality agreements and sealing orders . Employment lawyers are accustomed to meeting with CEO clients who are initially defiant and determined to resist a false claim of sexual harassment . They want their reputations and integrity preserved . But when a high-ranking executive is involved , the company rumor vine begins to grow . Depositions are taken . Employees are pulled out of the workplace to back one side or the other . Sterling reputations begin to bleed under the slash of a thousand paper cuts . And of course , the litigation process is expensive for the company . Knowing this , experienced lawyers often urge even the innocent accused executive to agree to mediate claims informally and avoid the possibility of a very public and very embarrassing federal lawsuit . Legitimate victims are also urged to settle rather than risk losing at trial . Once mediation begins , the parties are told that public humiliation and legal costs can be avoided with a quiet , confidential settlement . Both plaintiff and defendant are simultaneously silenced by the agreement 's penalty provisions . The truth of the claims will never be tested in any public forum . That is , unless the accused decides to run for public office . Then it appears the art of the leak can undermine the solidity of even the most carefully drafted of confidentiality agreements . Herman Cain said he never consented to the mediation process . The National Restaurant Association , through its board , might have negotiated its own deal with the two women who made allegations of sexual misconduct against Cain to avoid bad publicity and legal costs . Businesses will often `` settle and seal '' the case rather than endure the expense and embarrassment of defending even a falsely accused chief executive . Based on the sketchy reported accounts , the initial case against Cain might have been paper-thin . There is no assertion of overt sexual contact between him and the female employees in question . The website Politico , which broke the story , refers to witness accounts of episodes of conversations filled with `` innuendo '' and of `` physical gestures that were not overtly sexual '' but which made female employees feel uncomfortable . No one who has followed Cain 's astonishingly successful presidential campaign would be surprised to hear that he uses blunt language and gestures to express himself . The question of whether this blunt language constituted true sexual harassment may never be known . The claimant represented by attorney Joel Bennett , and recently identified as a federal government employee , has refused to go public despite the National Restaurant Association 's highly unusual decision to release her from the negotiated confidentiality agreement . The second and third women remain anonymous , while Bialek surfaces with very old , never formally reported claims . In a court of law , Cain would clearly win . But in this case we are not litigating a claim but selecting a president . The American public , exercising its common sense about the character and integrity of this presidential candidate , will be the only and final judge of the facts of this case . Given the secrecy of the sex harassment litigation process and the grave difficulty in determining the truth of old and moldy claims , it looks like a hung jury is the likely outcome . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Callan .
Paul ##son : The people accusing Cain relate encounters from years ago . The courts would n't hear these cases because of statute of limitations , he writes . The accusations , true and false , often settled out of court to avoid bad publicity . Callan : Cain may win in court , but in politics , what matters is public judgment .