Will I Ever See the $36MM Oberlin College Owes Me?
commonsense.news
commonsense.news
My guess is Gibson's won't see a penny any time soon. There would be a revolt by the student body and they wouldn't be able to afford it.
> Each year, more than two-thirds of Oberlin students receive some form of need-based financial assistance. Our three-part award package typically includes grants from the college, low-interest students loans, and work-study jobs.
My school gave $10k "merit-based scholarship" to everyone, as the ACT/SAT score threshold for that aid was well below the threshold for admission.
https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/college-exp...
> As Paul Tough reports for New York Times Magazine, 89% of students don't pay full price, and giving students a break has caused some colleges to operate at a loss.
> The average freshman student in the class of 2018 at one of these private nonprofit universities will get a discount of 50%, he reports.
That being said, I do not own a house, I do not own a car and while my 401k is reasonably funded it’s my only asset.
I too believed that no one paid full freight until it was my time to step up, and the financial aid package provided was. . . loans.
When they say 89% of students receive aid, the bulk of that is in the form of subsidized loans. And 11% is not an insignificant number.
That doesn't appear to be the case.
https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2022/Tuition-Discount-...
"In the 2021 NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, 359 private, nonprofit colleges and universities reported an estimated 54.5 percent average institutional tuition discount rate for first-time, full-time, first-year students in 2021-22 and 49 percent for all undergraduates—both record highs. By providing grants, fellowships, and scholarships, these institutions forgo about half the revenue they otherwise would collect if they charged all students the tuition and fee sticker price."
(Note that this article specifically indicates 82.5% received grant aid.)
> And 11% is not an insignificant number.
It is, as much of that will be international students.
Oberlin has an endowment valued at approximately $1 billion — this is ~3% of that. (Understanding all those funds may not be liquid, they certainly have some assets.)
the only real question is how much lower x million is from 36m.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ohio_US_Congressiona...
Oberlin is acting differently than any other large organization with a judgment like this, you run your appeals, if you can't get it thrown out you try and get it reduced, and in the end if you run out of appeals you pay. This is a dog-bites-man story....
The previous administration actually did, but maybe that's why they are now "the previous administration".
The college didn't just turn around and say they won't pay, they are following the established legal process and appealing to higher courts. For a $36 million (!) judgement they would be stupid not to (why does a defamation lawsuit need to be that much anyway?). The state supreme court handed down their judgement 2 days ago, and it is likely that Oberlin will have to pay now (with interest) unless they want to take it further federally.
If I knowingly-falsely call you a pedo and you lose your job as a result, then I’m liable for your lost wages. That’s how libel works.
ETA: according to the lawsuit, that is. Idk the detailed facts of the case personally, just reacting to the article.
In this case the defendant, Oberlin College, is a much larger business than the plaintiff, so the punitive damages should be much larger than the actual damages, if punitive damages are justified at all.
But the comment at the beginning of this thread asked why a defamation lawsuit needs to be that much, and I would answer: to deter acts like Oberlin's ruinous defamation of the bakery.
If the intent is to communicate, the court has to speak loud enough to be heard.
I don't doubt that modern day businesses make decisions based on whether it can lead to a social media-powered mob forming against them. Stories like these help understand why and give some details about what the worst case scenario might look like.
Seeing how as Weiss was forced out of her position at the NYT [1] by 'woke progressives' she has made it her goal to expose the destructive effects this ideology has with the clear intent of putting a stop to it.
Those who attempt to gain power and influence by denouncing others for thoughtcrime [2] shall be exposed and denounced themselves. The sooner this happens, the better it is for everyone involved.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/08/ohio-supreme-court-re...
They will need to pay...but the wheels of justice turn very slowly for this business/family.
(and yes, every story has different perspectives, and i don’t claim to have the facts at hand to weigh in at all..)
In my non-legal opinion, the College should have acknowledged some culpability for encouraging a riot, and should have disciplined the three students involved in the shoplifting, fake I.D., and assault of the shopkeeper.
Then they should have quietly settled with the shop for a couple hundred thousand plus legal fees and this whole thing would have been all but forgotten by now. In fact all the students who were around in 2016 would have long since graduated.
Instead, Oberlin has a public relations disaster on its hands. Or, at a minimum, some much unwanted attention and a very painful penalty that they can ill afford. They just cut around 100 spots from their core Conservatory program, and they also controversially fired about 100 unionized custodial and food staff.
My spouse is an Obie, and my teenager is looking at colleges. Having read this story, she's a lot less interested now in Oberlin, though a classmate of hers is going there this fall. Too bad.
Why is a school even getting involved, even if some business in town was being racist? Schools are for educating students and keeping them safe on campus.
School campuses are like fiefdoms these days. A lot of schools have their own campus police and handle cases between students internally, but asking local townsfolk to use their own arbiters instead of the police is really something else. Tangentially related I helped a friend with move-in day recently and they told me international students had been there for 2 weeks already... quarantining... in a city where all mask mandates ended months ago. It all seems so performative.
> A week after the incident, the school canceled all of our standing orders.
It's not a random business in town, it's a business they do business with. Seems reasonable to me that the racism of my chosen business partners would be relevant to my business.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-colleges-are-keeping-a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis#Higher_educat...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/06/06/137002727...
After the last appeal was denied, however, I don't know what the process is. My guess is the lawyers are getting creative.
Never underestimate the power and longevity of spite. Many litigants won't pay until after you are dead. No matter how much that costs - they can't let you "win".
They need to change this so that at least all legal costs have to be paid while appeal is pending, then if the appeal succeeds, they have to pay it back.
Then the state may have some time period to allow the the losing party to pay. If they have still not done so, the winning party can petition for a writ of execution, which allows you to take the judgment which is basically a floating lein, and attach it to specific property of the debtor. The property can then be levied, garnished, or foreclosed upon, usually with the help of the exeutive.
Attaching to real property is often fraught, because the forclosure process is complicated, and plenty of real property will have other liens on it, for example from a mortgage. This makes forclosing much more complicated.
Levies against "personal property" (chattel) can be somewhat easier, with the sheriff seizing the property, selling it at public auction, and giving you the proceeds up the the judgment amount and interest, and giving the rest back to the debtor. But while cool sounding, this is often fairly impractical due to the fact that a lot of chattel property has little value (or at least will get little money at auction), and the property worth substantial money is more likely to be leased, or subject to a loan, or other similar complications.
Attaching to and garnishing funds from a bank aaccount, or levying other intangible assets may be the easiest approach, especially for an organization like the college. For example attaching to the stocks/bonds etc that make up the colledge endowment would be able to recover this judgment without issue. (although attaching to intangible assets may be more complicated than physical assets, depending on state laws.)
Realistically, the moment you start trying to do any of this, the other party (if solvent and able to pay) will often suddenly be more than happy to just give you the money. (It turns out to be much cheaper and easier for them that way).
If the judgement holds they will presumably have to pay eventually.
[1] https://www.ktnv.com/news/national/judge-denies-motion-oj-si...
Gibson's is a small business targeting the lower end, with revenue likely in the low/mid six figures per year. It's like a convenience store which sells some groceries and baked goods. Coffee was near $1.00 in the mid 2000's. If someone were to sell Gibson's on a reasonable market, it would sell for less than 1M, I would guess more like 100k if you were to discount physical assets (which could be sold even after boycott).
36MM is completely absurd from an economic perspective. Instead, something else is going on here.
Conservative news outlets have made Oberlin a punching bag, and that must've percolated to this jury's award. It was meant as a political signal from biased citizens to punish Oberlin for being liberal in a now red-leaning state.
The balance of the penalty was punitive damages, which are intrinsically expressive; you can disagree with them, but they have nothing to do with how much the business was worth.
$36m is rational from an economic perspective. It's a giant slap on the wrist to a) stop them doing it again and b) stop others doing it again.
If you don't have punitive, a wealthy person(/business/organization) can do something awful to a poor person which causes them great harm (e.g. $50k) but the rich person can easily afford.
The revenue of Oberlin does seem much more relevant than the revenue of the bakery here to me.
That's because it's not just from an economic perspective. It's for damages but also punishment. The original award was $11 mil in damages, plus $33 mil punitive, and then also $6.5 mil legal reimbursement. The punitive got reduced on appeal to $25 mil.
Punishment is necessary because if suits were limited to damages, then people would break the law much more often, since suits aren't always brought and don't always succeed.
A punitive amount that's a little over double the economic damages is very reasonable. That's the whole point of the punitive part.
> something else is going on here... Conservative news outlets...
The idea that this is political or biased seems totally unsupported. This is just how the law works.
It's really tricky and I personally feel that number is appropriate to fine a university considering they have no issue taking loans with zero conscience. Gladly accept 50-200,000 from 18 year olds with limited life experience. The judgement is fair
> The Gibsons note that the jury initially awarded them $11,074,500 in compensatory damages and $33,223,500 in punitive damages. They assert that the jury’s punitive damages award represents less than three percent of Oberlin’s total assets. Noting that the purpose of punitive damages is to appropriately punish and deter defendants, the Gibsons argue that a purely mathematical application of the caps thwarts those purposes. They also argue that applying the cap in their case bears no rational connection to the public welfare or a rational connection to Oberlin’s wrongful conduct. They further argue that the punitive damages cap violates their right to a trial by jury.
That makes sense to me. If Oberlin just had to pay <$1m then what's stopping them from continuing this behavior in the future.
[1] https://via.hypothes.is/https://oberlinreview.org/wp-content...
[2] https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/9/2022/2022-O...
I tended to empathize more with the town folks, honestly, which was probably a class thing - I was on a "full-ride" scholarship, from a poor family, and working in the cafeteria with a lot of non-students.
There are a lot of reasons for tension, but I think the hardest one is that most of the students are explicitly in an experimental mode, trying out new ways of thinking and relating, while folks in the surrounding town... are not, and have no incentive to indulge the rich kids from out of town.
It's a good thing that the courts see this and awarded punitive damages. Oberlin trying to appeal that is just part of the process so that whole thing works. However, the outrage culture which can be weaponised and deployed against anyone causing great long term damage without any checks and measures is not healthy.
A false accusation that causes damage is grounds for a defamation claim, which is a tort. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" in tort law, either; torts are civil matters.
It is not enough for a claim to be "false" to establish defamation liability. Most importantly, you have to prove that the "false claim" is not a subjective matter open to debate, and you have to prove the claim caused damages. Where people making accusations get into trouble is when they include specific factual claims in their accusation that turn out to have been false, or claim that they're making their accusation based on specific factual claims that they know about but are declining to reveal.
Further, when this fact pattern involves a public figure, you have to do more than prove specific false factual claims that caused damage; you have to prove that the claims were made recklessly, not just negligently: that the accuser had good reason to know that the accusation was false --- it's not enough to say the accuser should have done more investigation, or should known better; you have to prove that they had evidence presented or obviously available to them that they deliberately ignored.
Oberlin managed to screw all of this up in a variety of ways. That's one of the reasons this case was so noteworthy. But an institution like Oberlin can accuse a business of racism based on conduct that the institution finds racist, but others don't; that's not defamation.
It is surely worth knowing here that Oberlin was not found liable for accusing Gibsons of racism, or for being "racist". Oberlin's right to deem Gibsons "racist" is constitutionally protected, whether you agree with Oberlin or not.
My point was the social (rather than legal angle). The fact that a mob was able to and decided that it was right to create an atmosphere that crippled an old business is the problem I'm mentioning.
* new evidence - but only under a set of conditions including that there was a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce it;
* appeal against sentence.
Notably there doesn't seem to be an option for "we don't like the verdict". A judge must grant a certificate of appeal before the case can go ahead - someone can't decide unilaterally that they will appeal. Appeals are nowhere near as common here as in the USA
> Gibson followed the student from the store, where they began struggling across the street, which is campus property. Police said they arrived to find Gibson on his back, with Aladin, joined by two friends, punching and kicking him. All three undergraduates were charged — Aladin with robbery and his friends with assault.
>Students mobilized, encouraging a boycott of the establishment, which is owned by Gibson’s father, David R. Gibson, and his grandfather, also named Allyn.
[1] https://archive.ph/20190613153725/https://www.washingtonpost...
(they may have been jailed while under arrest, but their plea deals kept them out of jail after that)
When we think about policies it's useful to think of who will exploit them. For instance, if you say to yourself "It's better to have a single human who can judge whether other people should have X" you've just turned that person into a powerful figure among those who want X. Sheriff Laurie Smith in the Bay Area appears to have sold gun permits.
If you go with "I will always believe person of traits X against person of traits Y" you are providing a handle for X to use you as a weapon against Y.
Essentially, it could be totally true that there are very few people who will use the handle. However, once you make it explicit policy to have the handle, you will find that your population has moved.
Sums up the movement in a nutshell
What happens next, I'm not sure. But they can't just defy a court order.
As someone who has been mistaken for Colombian, Moroccan, Egyptian and more, I would NEVER want to be given a leg up based on appearance or ethnicity, despite the fact that I've been lumped in with furniture delivery men at my own apartment or passed over for various opportunities. I would much rather try to break people's perceptions of the stereotype through my actions, than reinforce stereotypes through claiming that I need special treatment due to my deficiencies. I would rather work hard to make things better than be condescended towards, and I fervently hope others would too.
If you go to Eastern Europe you can see farmers in absolute poverty tilling their small plot with a donkey, and yet it is safe and the people are welcoming and friendly. If you go to Mozambique the markets are teeming with people who have but a few dollars to their name, and yet it's safe to sleep on the beach. What is so different with America's minority communities which invites the woke to be so overprotective towards them on the topic of violent crime? From what I've seen, usually this crime negatively affects the community it is from more than anyone else, anyways.
MM = 1000*1000
1. In Roman numerals M is thousand but MM is two thousand (e.g. MMXXII)
2. In scientific notation M is million (e.g. 1 MW)
The usage of MM to represent 1 million is done by people who didn't understand Roman numerals originally.
MM is a standard accounting abbreviation for “million”. See, for example https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...
Obviously, you’ve never looked at a financial statement of any sort.
K = 1000
M = 0.001
m = milli = 0.001
Anecdote: one small company that I worked for (in the 90s) was having cash flow problems with their larger customers stretching "net 30" into partial payments 4-6 months late. The firms offering to buy AR stuff like this were offering 25-33% up front, or 50% after 60 days. I don't know if the vultures smelled blood, or if there was an industry-wide problem that they saw (and we didn't).
Vs. Oberlin has 30x the needed assets, the courts have already ruled that the $36M is owed, and the debt-collection economies of scale kicked in quite a few $M ago.
(No, I'm not saying that this particular debt would sell at 97 cents on the dollar. But far less than that would let Lorna get on with her life. And the threat of such a sale might suddenly un-jam the payment check printer at Oberlin.)
You really think you could get such a rate? I was thinking the opposite - the firm would take 97 cents on the dollar. Debt collection is surely not a business built on such thin margins
I mean she's trying to blame her husband's cancer, his lack of treatment, and subsequent death on the College. Dude could have done his chemo. Claiming that he didn't want to appear weak so he wouldn't have gotten a sympathy judgment. That just reeks of spin.
This has arguably outlived anyone seriously using M=mille, but the practice carries on
Oberlin was assessed $11M in compensatory damages.
In my opinion, whenever cases like this end up in the media, someone is peddling a political opinion.
> The plaintiff, Stella Liebeck (1912-2004),[2] a 79-year-old woman, suffered third-degree burns in her pelvic region when she accidentally spilled coffee in her lap after purchasing it from a McDonald's restaurant. She was hospitalized for eight days while undergoing skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment. Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses. When McDonald's refused, Liebeck's attorney filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, accusing McDonald's of gross negligence.
> Liebeck's attorneys argued that, at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C), McDonald's coffee was boiling hot and more likely to cause serious injury than coffee served at any other establishment. The jury found that McDonald's was 80 percent responsible for the incident. They awarded Liebeck $200,000[3] in compensatory damages to cover medical expenses, and $2.7 million (equivalent to $5,000,000 in 2021) in punitive damages, the equivalent of two days of McDonald's coffee sales. The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to three times the amount of the compensatory damages, totalling $640,000. The parties settled for a confidential amount before an appeal was decided.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...
This case was highly publicized and used as a political boogeyman to scare the public into thinking that lawsuits were out of control.