After a Legal Fight, Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59M to a Local Bakery
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Meredith Raimondo, the Dean of Students at the time, who was passing out flyers and far more, nine months ago to accept a position as Vice President of Student Affairs at Oglethorpe University https://oberlinreview.org/25680/news/former-dos-meredith-rai...
From the NYTimes:
> In a statement, Oberlin said that “this matter has been painful for everyone.” It added, “We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community.”
> The college acknowledged that the size of the judgment, which includes damages and interest, was “significant.” But it said that “with careful financial planning,” including insurance, it could be paid “without impacting our academic and student experience.” Oberlin has a robust endowment of nearly $1 billion.
So what has Oberlin really learned?
So my guess is insurance may have paid the bill, but Oberlin will pay over time in the form of high premiums or something else. The biggest punishment to Oberlin will be the embarrassment of the actions. Heads should have already rolled for this.
I doubt that distinction protects the funds from a judgment creditor. The endowment money belongs to the university. Even though the university can only spend it in a certain way, that is an internal matter between the university and its donors. If the university did not have other funds from which to pay the judgment, I doubt the endowment money is protected just because it wasn't earmarked for "in case you lose a lawsuit."
An earmarked donation may legally constitute a trust. If an asset forms part of a trust, the university can only spend it in accordance with the terms of the trust, unless they have permission of a court to vary them (the cy-près doctrine). Creditors generally can’t claim assets held as part of a trust, unless the debt/tort/etc has some direct connection to the trust
That their insurance premium will rise only marginally next year.
It is an enormous defamation award, regardless of how you feel about where it leaves Oberlin.
If their goal is to make a total joke of the movements they support, they're doing a bang-up job. If their goal us anything else, maybe they should try and learn something.
Ohio (Oberlin) has a similar cap, but not necessarily the same protection for it. Missouri for example also had a cap, but it was held to violate the Missouri Constitution in 2014.
The Missouri case[1] came up last month post-Alex Jones, and its "separation of powers" argument is interesting. There's a professor at Georgetown who thinks a similar argument could succeed in Texas[2], but Texas at least tried to amend their Constitution to allow the cap[3].
1. https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=77893
2. https://twitter.com/HeidiLiFeldman/status/155561806384372121...
3. https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1555919948807028736, but the seven replies at https://twitter.com/HeidiLiFeldman/status/155594159820624691... find some flaws in the implementation
Oberlin and its students must comply with local "speech codes" or face being sued into non existence.
And people think "woke" political correctness is bad, at least the snowflakes use speech to counter speech, rather than courts.
"local speech codes" = whatever offends the sensibilities of small town Ohioans.
1: speech is the primary weapon of the identity-obsessed ideologues who are behind this whole debacle
2: those same ideologues claim that speech is violence, silence is violence
3: a simple refusal to use a made-up term - the can of worms called pronouns is a good example - can lead to loss of employment, imprisonment (now in Canada and Ireland, possibly elsewhere)
4: the 'speech codes' imposed by these ideologues is a constantly moving target with the above named consequences for violations of those codes
...it is clear that the ideologues in control of Oberlin have fallen on their own sword.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Will they learn anything from this debacle? No, probably not, they'll just chalk it up as another instance of systemic racism by the patriarchy or some such nonsense.
The solution would be to take control away from these ideologues but this is up to whatever institutions hold the reins of this college, the donors, alumni etc. If they do not take action the college will sink deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of ideological strife where the scientific method and reason are abandoned for ideological zeal.
Employees acting in their official capacities, just like any organization.
> how can a college slander?
Same as any newspaper or corporation can slander. In this case a dean acting in her official capacity (she was at the protest for her job) distributed a libelous flyer.
> "local speech codes" = whatever offends the sensibilities of small town Ohioans.
The appeals were not decided by small town Ohioans.
IIRC, the employee tried to take a photo of the shoplifter with his phone. The shoplifter took/smashed the phone or something. This makes it much more reasonable for the employee to try to stop the shoplifter from getting away. It wasn't like he tried to cuff the guy off the bat. He started with taking a photo but was thwarted.
> On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, an underage African-American Oberlin College student and Student Assistant Treasurer,[9] Jonathan Aladin (aka Elijah Aladin), attempted to purchase a bottle of wine using a fake identification card.[8] The store clerk, Allyn D. Gibson, a son and grandson of the owners,[6] rejected the fake ID. Gibson noticed that the student was concealing two other bottles of wine inside his jacket.[10][6] According to a police report, Gibson told the student he was contacting the police, and when Gibson pulled out his phone to take a photo of the student, the student slapped it away, striking Gibson's face.[11] The student ran out of the store. Gibson followed and then grabbed and held onto the shoplifter outside the store after the shoplifter had also assaulted the store owner, David Gibson.[6] Two other students, Cecelia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, friends of the shoplifter, joined the scuffle.[6] When the police arrived, they witnessed Gibson lying on the ground with the three students punching and kicking him.[11] The police report stated that Gibson sustained a swollen lip, several cuts, and other minor injuries.[7][12] The police arrested the students, charging all three with assault and the shoplifter with robbery as well. In August 2017, the three students pleaded guilty, stating that they believed Gibson's actions were justified and were not racially motivated.[11][13][14] Their plea deals carried no jail time in exchange for restitution, the public statement, and a promise of future good behavior.[13][15] From their trial courtroom, Assistant Dean of Students Antoinette Myers sent Raimondo a text message: "I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that store."[16]
That's not really an example of a "chase-and-detain policy", nor was it a "suspected shoplifter"; by the time anyone was chasing anyone else, it was a matter of assault.
I was under the impression that punching and kicking turns shoplifting into a robbery, no?
Oberlin was in the wrong, as was the Assistant Dean of Students, yet there were no real repercussions.
I don't smoke weed, but we sure have our priorities wrong.
people say the US has a strict justice system, but in some cases it seems completely loony.
You don't need to have a Blue Lives bumper sticker on your car to think that people being punished for committing crimes is a good thing.
Losing a little merchandise is no big deal, especially if you can identify the person to police in a report later.
Attempting to detain a person is dangerous all around. The risk of escalation and injury to the parties involved is high, and a simple shoplifting can turn into something much worse (as happened here). You never know what drugs a shoplifter might be on, or what weapons they might have.
I'm sympathetic to the person being robbed, and this is no defense of the actions of the robber in any way, but it's always the smarter play to let the cops deal with it.
I probably wouldn't do anything either. But I also wouldn't begrudge anyone who who has spent years building that business who decides they're not going to let people just walk in and steal stuff.
Hard to compare with a min wage employee at Target or whatever.
I understand why the shopkeeper would make this decision in the heat of the moment, but it's always a mistake to try and physically confront somebody committing a petty crime directly. They were even outnumbered!
Ultimately the confrontation actually was a huge boon to the shopkeeper, due to Oberlin's bungling of the situation, but that's not in any way repeatable. It's simply not worth the risk of being forced to commit violence and/or have violence inflicted upon your person for a few bucks.
The fictional account you've constructed you're probably right about, but it has little to do with reality.
> Gibson noticed that the student was concealing two other bottles of wine inside his jacket.[10][6] According to a police report, Gibson told the student he was contacting the police, and when Gibson pulled out his phone to take a photo of the student, the student slapped it away, striking Gibson's face.[11] The student ran out of the store. Gibson followed and then grabbed and held onto the shoplifter outside the store after the shoplifter had also assaulted the store owner, David Gibson.[6] Two other students, Cecelia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, friends of the shoplifter, joined the scuffle.[6] When the police arrived, they witnessed Gibson lying on the ground with the three students punching and kicking him.
That seems to be the most apt conclusion. Being an educational institution should involve more than just indulging the students. It should also challenge them and be measured in their responses to events, even if that means being unpopular with students.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) free-speech rankings seem like a good proxy for this: https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/student-survey...
Ranking #135, Speech Climate: Slightly Below Average
Hmmm... pretty normal and barely passing.
1. The total ranking is wholistic, it includes pressure felt both by peers and by faculty. Given "being the adult in the room" might include reigning in peer-pressure that's probably fine.
2. FWIW, It was ranked much better on "Administrative support"
3. Tolerance for conservative speakers: #197/203 (obviously there is a lot of self-selection of liberal students going to Oberlin, so it would be very easy to be the only person with a particular conservative viewpoint, and even easier to think you are).
Disclosure: My sister graduated from Oberlin 20 years ago. She was an avid line-dancer at the time and would change out of her boots before going back on campus.
I agree the FIRE rankings are a good resource. But it's worth pointing out that FIRE opposes this verdict.
> In its ruling, the Court of Appeals agreed that students had a right to protest. But the court said that the flier and a related student senate resolution — which said that the store had a history of racial profiling — were not constitutionally protected opinion.
So the fliers and the student senate resolution are not free speech.
I did find one document [0] that was a legal filing that references some FIRE documents discussing speech codes, but that was it. FIRE didn't sign it, and as far as I can tell FIRE had nothing to do with the filing supporting Oberlin.
Some of the attorneys signing the filing identified themselves as "Attorneys for Amici Curiae National Coalition Against Censorship, and Defending Rights & Dissent." NCAC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coalition_Against_Cen...) and DRAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defending_Rights_%26_Dissent) are not the same thing as FIRE.
[0] https://www2.oberlin.edu/appeal/documents/amicus-ncac_osc.pd...
I was caught off-guard because I generally agree with FIRE, and my first reaction was that this was an exception. It made me rethink about my reaction to the verdict. I can't think of another organization that fits this description in my mind. But I could be wrong!
I will continue thinking about where I saw or heard this and leave a link if I can find it.
This crosses into the territory of defamation though so it’s not merely their progressive political opinions being challenged by the courts.
most of the example complaints they highlight are just students saying they don't feel comfortable speaking up or they had dorm mate issues.
Does not feel like a good way to rank a school's actions to hinder speech (as an institution/administration).
Does have some better real examples but large majority I read were not.
Just because you don't feel comfortable doesn't mean someone is stopping you from speaking.
You can't force someone to live with or listen to ones ___ whatever religion, hate speech, crazy liberal ideas etc.
And yes.. Most young people are pretty open minded and fairly liberal.
If you hold views outside that box you should speak them! But you can't be made if people judge you or the majority speak themselves against those beliefs.
I don't see how those common complaints are a school forcing someone to be silent or punishing them for their viewpoints.
Maybe I'm being too emotional given recent court rulings/direction of my country; Which is probably why I took so much time on that site and commenting.
But your speech !== that I will listen, or not judge you, or allow you to be around me.
A lot of the religious court rulings (PrEP most recent) feel like these complaints. Freedom to speak/express your religion does not go so far as to control my choices and my body or force me to listen to you.
The problem is that, at the end of the day, the students are your customers for institutions like this.
If you witness a crime you can arrest the criminal. It's basic civics. Something you might find about in an institution of higher learning. Don't know if they have one of those in Oberlin.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georg...
He did not say “if you witness a crime you can call the police”. I don’t want a society where any random yokel thinks he can detain someone.
But that law was in fact “argued against” in the very red Georgia and it was repealed by a Republican legislation and Republican governor
For example, from Wikipedia:
“In the United States, a private person may arrest another without a warrant for a crime occurring in their presence. However, the crimes for which this is permitted vary by state.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen's_arrest#United_States
> Georgia just outlawed that practice
Not exactly; they clarified the circumstances under which a citizen's arrest can be made[0], "including shopkeepers who witness shoplifters and restaurant owners and employees who witness 'dine and dash' customers."
[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/995835333/in-ahmaud-arberys-n...
You really think any random person can detain someone? Do you also think you can force someone to stop for speeding? You can arrest someone for smoking weed as an ordinary citizen?
Do you think you can sleep with a prostitute and then arrest them?
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/20/c...
But in theory, what they are supposed to be able to do is surprisingly similar.
On detaining a random person, quoting https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/citizen%27s_arrest, In general, the ability to perform a citizen’s arrest is the same for a regular person as it is for a police officer without a warrant.
This is completely hypothetical, I don’t own a gun.
But, because of the incident I posted. Even the very red GA and the Republican governor thought that it might not be a good idea to let any random yokel detain someone
https://apnews.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-georgia-arrests-gov...
If an Officer makes a wrongful arrest in the line of duty, Qualified Immunity will go a long way to shielding them, whereas a citizen without Qualified Immunity would be subject to wrongful arrest lawsuits and kidnapping charges.
I don't think there's much chance the cashier here grabbed the wrong person.
That’s false, for the reasons I’ve outlined. The courts have created a specific special legal status that applies to police, but not to ordinary people.
In abstract both arguments (strict enforcement of all laws; and that the system's results are inhumane so lesser laws should be ignored) make surface level sense. A middle ground sounds best (some laws are loosened, leniency is used on first offenses, prison system reform to rehabilitate instead of punish, etc.).
An employee took a photo of the shoplifter in the act of stealing, the shoplifter got angry and assaulted the employee for this. That's when then the employee tried apprehending the shoplifter.
Assault, not petty theft. Also, doesn't violence turn theft into robbery?
One person is more culpable in the life ruining than the person who contacts the police.
Except that's not what happened. The shopkeeper was assaulted and another shopkeeper (a member of their family) also assaulted before they pursued the assailant.
I totally agree that the “tough on crime” strategy doesn’t work. But the solution can’t be to let people get away with petty crimes or even make the perpetrators into victims. Law abiding citizens need to be protected.
> Dear Obies,
> Today, Oberlin College and Conservatory initiated payment in full of the $36.59 million judgment in the Gibson’s Bakery case, an amount that represents the awarded damages and interest owed. Please see the college’s public statement below.
> While this outcome is a disappointment, our financial plans for this possibility, which included insurance coverage, mean that this payment will not impact or diminish our academic or student life experience, or require us to draw down Oberlin’s endowment.
> Like me, the majority of the campus was not here at the beginning of this matter in 2016. But it is also true that this case has been difficult for all of us who love this institution and its hometown. I am looking forward to all that is ahead, and remain focused on Oberlin’s core mission of providing a truly excellent liberal arts and musical education.
> Carmen Twillie Ambar > President
The buck stops with my predecessor. Delightful executive engineering of the slimiest sort. One gets paid to own the past at that level. Accepting the job requires due diligence on the past and being paid to own any uncertainty. That is one disgustingly cowardly sentence meriting immediate action by the board to throw this bum out.
Notice, I don't care about the outcome but only the integrity that such an exec should show.
We’re in the same society, this is bad precedent, and I’d prefer for it not to happen where I am.
“I was not here. The reason I am here has something to do with what happened.”
I would guess most of Oberlin’s leadership from the time of the incident has moved in. At least those who would be seen as culpable, fair or not.
Edit: yes, basically all new leadership since the incident: https://www.oberlin.edu/president. It may seem like they are distancing themselves, but, well, they are distant from it. They have probably spent their time at Oberlin cleaning up other people’s messes and are fairly exhausted by it. Not an excuse, but you can imagine it has lingered over their tenure.
Pretty incredible Oberlin can get out of this considering what other insurers will do to avoid paying for incidents with cause.
Yeah I'm a bit surprised by that, too. The negotiations with their insurer must have been really something. Only thing I can imagine is that they cut some sort of deal that makes it worth the insurance company not trying to fight with them over it. Maybe they have to basically pay it back over time with interest..?
One can dream, anyway.
It's not a magnanimous concession by Oberlin, it's a court-ordered amount. If they didn't pay, the bailiffs would arrive.
So insurance is gonna pony up for them, they won’t have to touch their BILLION dollars, the my don’t have to apologize, and aren’t admitting any wrongdoing.
At least the Gibson family will get something out of it. Not sure it’s justice, but $36Mil would go far…
1: https://www.commonsense.news/p/will-i-ever-see-the-36-millio...
If the business is running at a loss (including legal fees) then yes that loss can be used to reduce the tax burden this year.
But since the loss burden is 100% [1],and the tax burden say 50% this is worse, not better. Sure the 5 million accumulated loss means 2.5 million less tax, but it also means 5 million gone to cover the losses..
[1] losses are funded from somewhere, and those funds typically have to be replaced sooner or later (or bankruptcy). Working capital, reserves, loans etc. Unless they're like listed on the stock exchange.
I mean in the sense that it feels like you're suggesting that "offsetting expenses" makes it better. When it makes it worse. [1]. So in answering the question "is this taxable income" - the answer is "yes". If you wanted to qualify it more it would be more along the lines of "not just tax, there's likely a lot of other expenses incurred as well."
[1] Yes, it's better in the pure sense that there's "less tax", but overall there's more expenses than the tax that was saved.
I guess the reply seemed strange to me because it started the thought, and then kinda didn't complete it.
The post could have just said "yes", or could have mentioned the additional costs and explained that taxes were not the only likely overhead. But (it read to me) like the thought was incomplete, or was somehow implying the expenses were a good thing.
Clearly though I misunderstood it - my bad.
Race is always a factor in America, especially its criminal justice system, are the students confessions genuine contrition or motivated by fear of disproportionate punishment?
A question impossible to answer.
They were arrested by the cops in the middle of the act of assaulting the employee (kicking him while he was on the ground) and with the shoplifted property on their possession.
A conviction was already assured, the guilty plea was an extremely rational move, whether out of contrition or fear.
School administrators at Oberlin pretty clearly believed that Gibson's racially profiled students and victimized lower-income non-white students. And, here's the important thing about that: to some extent, Oberlin is entitled to believe that and say so, regardless of what the "facts" are. That's because, to an extent, those are subjective statements, and defamation consists of false statements of fact.
Where Oberlin screwed up royally was in recklessly presenting facts that supported their preconceived (and constitutionally protected) notions about Gibson's moral failings. But it's easy to see how someone could do that: you see it in HN arguments every day, if not every hour. People believe things that confirm the rest of their beliefs.
It turns out, if you casually do that while running a university, you can end up costing your university tens of millions of dollars. And rightly so. But the story you want to tell, about Oberlin's administrators simply manufacturing a story about Gibson's for the hell of it --- no, that's almost certainly not what happened.
I disagree with your second.
I agree with your third statement.
None of this changes anything I said.
It's a lot more than that.
https://www.lawlion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UPDATED-F...
When the author anonymously interviewed students, he gathered the following responses:
• “I totally have [taken things from a store downtown without paying for it].
I think I’ve stolen from Gibson’s twice. I took a packet of those noodles that come in boxes… It wasn’t expensive and I felt like it. I just preferred not paying for it, but I could have.”
• A female student admitted that she has stolen many things from Gibson’s Bakery and Ben Franklin’s. “I took a wine bottle. I had a large winter jacket and I put the bottle in the lining and I walked right out.” And, “I took pens from Ben Franklin because individually the pens cost $4 and I thought it was a racket.”
• “Probably [I have stolen from downtown] but let me think about it…yeah, no, I do that all the time.” The same student then talked about how they stole a one-hundred-dollar ($100) bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery.
• “I have stolen from Gibson’s, Kim’s, IGA. I took some dumb stuff. From Gibson’s I took some steak knives for an avocado that I also stole. I was really drunk and that was really bad.”
• “I think I’ve taken candy and just small shit from Ben Franklin’s and the Oberlin Market.”
• “[I have taken] a few pens from Ben Franklin over the years… they’re hard to resist.”
• One said she’s never paid for Chapstick while at Oberlin for four years.
• The author: “I myself have stolen from the very people I’ve interviewed for this story. I could have paid for the items easily, but I chose to steal them instead.”
This student and/or institutional attitude was supported by the statistics provided from the Oberlin Police Department of thefts at Gibson’s Bakery from January 1, 2011 to November 14, 2016. These statistics show that of the 40 adults arrested for theft during that time period, 33 of those adults (82.5%) were Oberlin College students.
The affluent, privileged Oberlin students profiled in the article don’t even feel shame about stealing from local small businesses. That suggests not only something about them, but the moral context they inhabit. And these are our next generation of leaders! What if we have made a mistake and ratcheting down punishments for theft had the effect of weakening social taboos against it? What if the students aren’t the product of something that can be called progress? What if the Saudis are on to something?
Are you just upset because you think corporal punishment for theft should be outside the Overton window and you assume I agree and am just being flippant? (And I’m not sure what the “ideological direction” here is. I’m pretty sure right wing people don’t think sharia gets anything right.)
I'm probably being too testy about this. There's been a pretty clear shift with your comments (people have emailed me about it out of the blue!) and it's been disappointing, in the sense that I have a rooting interest in people who contribute good stuff to HN continuing to do so, and not tearing the place down. But that's my problem, not yours.
To steelman your argument, you're concerned about proliferation of, essentially, tomfoolery and pilferage amongst the young. Because of changing or weakening of cultural norms, or because of some other reason (maybe poverty or class divides or some such explanation). I mostly share these concerns, to be honest, because in the last 2 years I've started to see the apathy present in younger co-workers that have joined the company I'm at. The problem I have with your comparison is that ... no one wants to be like Saudi Arabia except the Saudis. Older iterations of Civilization had much more draconian enforcement of law because, and this is just my personal opinion based on my own reading of history, the stakes were a lot higher. Stealing someone's coin or robbing them of their livestock literally killed the victim (usually very slowly and very very miserably), and so, in a way that I understand, it made sense for the penalty for such a transgression to be as or nearly as extreme as the cost to the victim.
I'm not sure what purpose it would serve to bring that back, since the stakes are demonstrably not that high. I realize you're not arguing for that, and are making a broader point. I'm trying to think of constructive ways to explain to these kids that "stealing is bad", but then I just realize that the problem isn't the kids, it's the Professors and the University, and redirect my criticism toward those institutions instead.
You have a point about abundance changing the balance compared to earlier eras. I’ll have to think about that.
My point about scarcity and material abundance isn’t that harsher penalties weren’t morally or philosophically justified. Just that it was much easier to do so when things were scarce.
I don't want to ban you and have no intention to, but you create a big problem for us if we ban people for comments like this and then an account like yours does the same thing. Users expect fairness. How am I supposed to answer them when they say things like "so it's ok if rayiner does it?"
However, they don't mention any of the emails/texts that came out between administrators for some reason, which is what put the nail in the coffin for Oberlin. If you read the FAQ by the prosecution, you'll see that almost all of the fun details are in the private communications between administrators, not in what they publicly did: https://www.lawlion.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UPDATED-F...
How Meredith Raimondo has a job lined up outside of Oberlin is beyond me. I doubt she's actually learned a lesson, especially because she isn't bearing any individual culpability, and I have to imagine she will just be a little bit more discreet while planning smear campaigns and tortious interference against family businesses.
Yes, I was "amused" to see Oberlin's FAQ on the case (<https://www.oberlin.edu/news-and-events/bakery-litigation/fa...>) describe Raimondo's texts as
>Yes. Some senior administrators and faculty did use unprofessional language in a few text messages and emails well after the protest. Appropriate disciplinary action was taken in response to this behavior.
I doubt that.
Oh wow, no-- go read the the court docs. Particularly what they obtained in discovery. Or just check out the appeals decision, which gives an okay summary (though it skips some of the schools wrongdoing that wasn't disputed): https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/9/2022/2022-O...
They got in hot water because a dean was distributing flyers full of falsehoods, because the school posted in their buildings and refused to remove a resolution repeating the same falsehoods, because -- even knowing the claims were false they refused to issue any kind of retraction or reversing statement (because they thought doing so would anger the students), instead trying to extract a promise to not report shoplifters to the police anymore, and then the school barred one of their vendors from doing business with the bakery, causing a significant financial damage to it.
One could excuse the school for making some initial errors in judgement, but they aggressively refused to correct them even after the errors were abundantly clear.
Their actual award was much larger but the punitive damages were limited by damage caps to twice the compensatory damages -- too bad, because given Oberlin's wealth the ultimate cost is comparatively insignificant compared to the magnitude of their gross and sustained misconduct.
Oberlin is now responsible for the speech of its adult students and now must censor them in a Ministry of Truth like role to avoid civil liability. Must they also censor researchers debunking the efficacy of drugs in trials causing financial harm to Big Pharma?
Gibson's may even be right morally, they are unfairly maligned as racists, but free speech doesn't hinge on morality, but liberty.
Do you believe business are entitled to your money? And if they no longer earn your business they should be able to sue you?
This perversity happened during the Civil Rights movement, white business owners sued blacks who caused them financial losses for refusing to patronize their racist establishments.
"The latest amount consists of about $5 million in compensatory damages, nearly $20 million in punitive damages, $6.5 million in attorney’s fees and almost $5 million in interest."
This only contributes to our litigious society where lawyers get rich through shakedowns, and we as citizens and consumers shoulder the price either through increased overhead that is passed on to us, or ever more absurd disclaimers and risk mitigation measures to prevent from frivolous suits.
So I am glad Oberlin lost overall, but the size of this judgement makes me very sad.
And $5M in compensatory damages seems about right for 2 years of a successful small bakery
Why should I get 30 years for a crime that should be 5 years because they want to send a signal. Make it fair and make it equal.
Edit: Apparently this is a unpopular opinion. All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Not meets the crime and exceeds it in order to prevent unrelated parties from committing the same crime. They aren't my responsibility.
I'd think that having your standard practice be to make sure it wasn't worth it would find the same amount as the threshhold for both deterring the current perpetrator and deterring others.
And I don't want my government prosecuting people and giving them high sentences just to deter other people. It's barbaric behavior.
Like cutting the hand off a thief so others know what will happen if they get caught stealing.
That's not how it works, it's about getting the accountants or lawyers or whoever to tell that person's boss "this can be expected to cost us $XXXX".
Deterrence is the whole point of punishing crime. Every society in human history has done this. It's not "barbaric," what's "barbaric" is allowing criminals to do horrible things to innocent people without any incentive against it.
That difference is not clear to me. What sort of deterrence to an individual would not also lead others to think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught? - or, to consider the contrapositive, if it does not invoke that thought in others, why would the convicted be deterred from trying again? The fact that they were caught once does not mean they will be next time.
Furthermore, I dispute the idea that deterring people from committing a harmful act, before that harm is done, is not a justifiable goal for a society (note that this does not imply that I must therefore endorse the cutting off of thieves' hands.) Quite often, the perpetrator cannot compensate fully for the harm done, and it is always better if it were not done in the first place.
We should note that what is being deterred here is Oberlin's decision to fight the case rather than accept its obvious responsibility and compensate the plaintiffs for the damage it did. Personally, I think this is a net benefit to society, and if it makes entities in similar situations think twice, so much the better.
It seems like that you are suggesting that we could simply not punish people at all for first offense, as long as they can credibly promise that they won’t reoffend. After all, if they won’t reoffend, under what you say, there is no point in punishing them at all. Sure, this means that people will know that they can scot-free offend one time, and so many more will likely do, especially if the risk of being caught is relatively low, but you explicitly want to ignore that. This is crazy to me. No society ever worked like that.
Additionally, deterrence function is not “virtue signaling”, this is not what the term means.
Public prosecution is absolutely terrible way to deal with dealing out punishment. Not all individuals are the same, not all crimes are the same, but once you are given a guilty verdict judges are expected to give out sentencing guidelines that match similar tag lines/crimes regardless of circumstances.
Punishment should be more personalized and should be a performance improvement plan based on the individual and how they respond to the effective plan/action.
I really ask you to consider this from a moral standpoint.
Society isn't always right. Sometimes society just does things because it's easier, not because it's right.
Exactly right. I want to send a message to potential criminals. I think that it’s highly beneficial to sacrifice the well being of a criminal in order to prevent more people from being victimized by other criminals. I think preventing crime is a strong moral imperative, and this is significantly more important consideration than the rights of criminals. In fact, I think putting the latter above the right of the people to not be victimized is morally despicable. I hope that my position is clear.
You should not punish people to stop the future actions of unrelated people by giving certain ones bigger punishments than meets the crime.
Add a deterrence but only make the deterrence with the intention/scope of the individual who committed the crime.
Don't add a deterrence with the intention of stopping other unrelated parties. That is an unfair assessment of my individual crime and the harm that I caused.
That is an unequal punishment/consideration that shouldn't be included in the process.
If they were meant to deter others, they would be pegged to the size of other potential wrongdoers. But they are not. They are pegged to the size of the actual wrongdoer.
Have you heard of "treble damages"?
I think treble damages are easily within the realm of fitting the crime. And the full $30M before interest is less than 3x the $11.5M in combined bakery and legal losses.
Also, you have to factor in the chance of getting punished. If a parking meter had a fifty cent fine for not paying, nobody would ever pay.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole point of the criminal-justice system is to attempt to deter criminal behavior. It's practically definitional.
Although the systems have often been merged in recent times, many places (including some parts of the US) had two entirely separate court systems: a "court of law" for the enforcement of laws by the government, and the imposition of punitive sanctions to discourage behaviors by making them unprofitable to engage in, and "courts of equity" wherein individuals could bring suits directly against each other and where the judges had broad discretion to impose various remedies (e.g. specific performance).
An example would be if your neighbor stole one of your cows: the government (often in the form of a sheriff or magistrate or similar) could decide to go after them in a court of law, because having people stealing each others' livestock is socially corrosive, hence why it's illegal. But you as the owner of the cow could petition a court of equity for relief, independently of the government's decision to pursue action in a court of law. The court of equity's remedy might basically be "give back the cow", or if they had already eaten the cow, maybe they'd tell them to give you an equivalent cow instead.
There are a few US states that still maintain these dual systems: Delaware is the most well-known one, and its Court of Chancery deals with lots of contract disputes and such between private parties. Tennessee and a few other states are similar.
AFAICT the existence of courts of law (or their equivalents) are almost universal features of complex civilizations and probably governments generally.
If there's no punishment for breaking the law, you don't have laws, merely polite suggestions.
One downside to retribution only is that the odds of being caught for a crime are less than 100%, so someone stands to gain more than they stand to lose by breaking the crime. For example if the punishment for tax perjury was commensurate with my ill gotten gains, I wouldn't have any reason outside of a personal moral framework not to lie. But if instead I can go to prison for 3 years, a good chance to save a fair chunk of money is much less attractive.
Later
Nope, I'm wrong: the total punitive damages awarded to the Gibson were closer to 1x economic damages --- Oberlin got to 36MM by appealing and putting themselves on the hook for an additional 6MM in legal fees.
Also, I should be saying "compensatory" and not "economic", since there's a bunch of compensatory damage categories that aren't economic.
The problem is the power asymmetry between the powerful and the weak. You address that by making it too expensive from the powerful's perspective, not by making it equitable from the weak's perspective.
Even if the lawyers were to receive 100% of the payouts from these cases, we the public still benefit: the threat of these types of lawsuits prevents other similar abuses.
The activists perpetuating the boycott were right about one thing: this is about way more than a single event or a single venue. https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/e765b3b3/oberlin...
To truly deter this kind of behavior, at least 40% of their endowment should be taken as punitive damages. They should be put in a bad enough situation financially that they need a bailout.
If it had been a much smaller amount then the college would not care about losing one bit. They might even revel in losing as a way of burnishing their activist bona fides. It would be like a marketing expense if it were an order of magnitude lower.
The fact that Oberlin's misconduct has has zero serious consequences for the institution or the culpable staff shows that the punitive damages were far too small. There is little incentive to change their practices to avoid similar incidents in the future.