Will I Ever See the $36 Million Oberlin College Owes Me?

Family businesses close locations from time to time without meaning the business is failing. Successive generations want to leave the business. Family members relocate. Elders die. There are a thousand reasons without the business itself failing.

 

But if that is the case, you don't recover damages from someone else alleging that they are the cause of the failure. At best then, if you were claiming that the business failed because of the torts committed against you, you have to argue and relative appraisals from what you could sell the business for as an ongoing concern. But at least from the limited facts in the appellate opinion, it doesn't sound like that was the case. They talked about the inability to make ongoing payroll

 

I know. I was pointing out the disingenuousness of the post I quoted that furthered a politically based narrative that a family business serving the community without incident for almost a century and a half (and previously patronized heavily by the school that libeled it) was suddenly manned by a bunch of "losers".

 

I have a general issue with seeing fools prosper, I will admit my bias here

 

Actually we don't know anything about their reputation in the community prior to the incident in question except that they seem to have been successful in their indirect vendor relationship with the University, which was interrupted. The students allege that there been a long history of disparate treatment. I looked in the appellate opinion, the only facts available to me, to see whether that issue was ever explored. It wasn't. The students were dismissed early on and the only issue that the jury decides it was whether the University should have "corrected" the impression, which I suppose could be an implicit determination. But it certainly didn't look like the issue was ever factually explored. And I'm not sure how you could.

This again gets into the difficulty of 1) holding the University responsible largely for failing to rein in their students, and; 2) determining that the students were not within their rights to boycott based upon their perceptions.

I'm trying to imagine a different scenario where the University does precisely what the family thinks they should have and tells the students they're just wrong to feel the way they do. In fact, I can't even imagine that it would have gone well if the University tried to still do business with them. If you read the appellate opinion, the University even offered to restore the business relationship with the family, but the family insisted on the condition that the University also affirmatively instruct the students that they were wrong to feel the way they did.

Plus there were punitive damages, which seems really hard to understand given the facts even as stated in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.

Again, I'm only going by the appellate opinion. It was a multiweek trial. I'm not going to claim to have read the record. And I would give the verdict more deference if the verdict was deciding those issues. But it didn't. Most of those claims were knocked out and they were pretty limited factual issues decided by the jury, at least according to the appellate opinion.

Suggested in the appellate opinion but not laid out exactly was that this happened right around the election of Trump in 2016, which had everyone fired up. Nothing else about Trump is stated - is just mentioned in passing as creating the atmosphere. I don't know if the business was perceived as being Trump supporters.

But my daughter was in college at the time and I know they were given a day off to deal with the shock of a man that evil having been elected. She went to NYU where there was obviously a lot of fear.

Back to this case. It just amazes me how everyone simply presumes that there was no merit to the students' perception and that the store owner son actually interrupted a crime in progress, when that's not really covered in the available facts. Both could be true, but they're not set out the facts. They're just presumed subconsciously, which should tell us something

 

Much more likely they decided to open a branch in Elyria, later decided to close that branch and concentrate on the original one that had been in the family since 1885.

 

Seems like another way of saying was shrinking and failing

 

Even assuming that the family's decision to open a second branch was a failure and by the way that's just an inference that you have apparently drawn since there is no indication that was the case, it's still quite a stretch to assume the original location was failing. Rationally, there is absolutely no way that they would have won their case against Oberlin absent verifiable data that sales dropped significantly following the boycott. Similarly, they almost certainly wouldn't have been able to prevail against the University absent evidence that the school supported the boycott even if the boycott was originally initiated by its students.

 

C'mon. What does rationality have to do with it? More likely they lucked into a sympathetic jury that ate up their 'struggling mom and pop done in by some crazy kids' story. The idea that there is anything rational about any of this is ridiculous.

 

So you're suggesting that a University with a huge endowment and its insurance carrier weren't represented by competent attorneys and that the plaintiff, a local family owned bakery had better attorneys?

 

The quality of attorneys don't change the atmospherics. In this case, here is listed the counsel for the store

TERRY A. MOORE, JACQUELINE BOLLAS CALDWELL, OWEN J. RARRIC, and MATTHEW W. ONEST, Attorneys at Law, for Appellees/Cross-Appellants. LEE E. PLAKAS and BRANDON W. MCHUGH, Attorneys at Law, for Appellees/CrossAppellants. JAMES N. TAYLOR, Attorney at Law, for Appellees/Cross-Appellants.

By the way, the piece you linked to from Fox earlier in the thread about the University making interest is misleading. If the verdict was bonded, that would include interest

 

Where would you derive that from? I suggested they lucked into a sympathetic jury, the most competent attorneys in the world cant control what happens in a jury trial.

 

Let's see, a long time local business vs. students and college administrators before a local jury, with racial overtones. I can't imagine what you're referring to. It's not like we have a longstanding rhyming term for such disputes between a city/town and a local institution of higher learning that wears gowns at graduation

 

My focus on the linked article from Fox was on the role of the University rather than the interest and the linked article does appear accurate insofar it reported the role of the University in supporting the boycott. I would concede that all parties received excellent representation at the appellate level and that it's very possible that bakery was also well represented at the trial level. Just my opinion and at least looking in from the outside it did seem that while the damages were excessive a jury would not have returned a verdict in favor of the bakery absent strong quantifiable data that the boycott seriously damaged the business.

 

A lot of the damages are punitive, not compensatory.

I'm not sure what I think about "the role of the University in supporting the boycott". What's undisputed is that there were administrators at the original day one protest, that they cut off a business relationship with the store, and then were in negotiations with the store to reverse that, but that the store insisted that they also tell the students they been wrong. I'm getting all that from the appellate opinion, and the appellate opinion, pursuant to the correct legal standard when a party challenges a verdict, list the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict. So those were the "strongest" facts in favor of the bakery.

Nothing wrong with looking at it that way. That's how they're supposed to look at it on appeal, which is another reason it is inaccurate to say that three courts all separately passed on the facts and agreed. The Ohio Supreme Court didn't make any ruling other than not accepting review. And the appellate court only considered whether the verdict should be overturned given a presumption of the facts most favorable to the verdict.

I still thought the outcome was a little bit surprising given that even the "strongest facts" did not seem that strong. The University's culpability was primarily framed in terms of the University's failure to correct their students. There were some very limited facts about direct action by the University. In fact, the text message they quoted twice as being the primary evidence relied upon by the jury actually read to me had the exact opposite effect. It was the major administrator who was named individually responding internally venting about a letter from an unnamed former professor criticizing them. She said she was so angry about it that she was tempted to unleash the students but that she understood they were all trying to put back the incident behind them. That to me is evidence of anger but ultimate action trying to seek peace, and it was undisputed they tried to work out matters with the store owners, without success.

The owners of the bakery said that they didn't agree because the University wanted a term of settlement to require the store to change the way they dealt with shoplifters. The University official said that allegation was absurd, that it never happened. I suppose that's a disputed issue of fact, but thinking like a lawyer, which I am, I tend to think the University had to be telling the truth, if for no other reason that you could never put a term like that in an actual settlement agreement. It would be void as against public policy and would certainly read terribly. It just makes no sense.

One fact I did not see in the 31 pages I read, may have been in the last 24, is how long the actual picketing occurred. The only incident described occurred immediately after the arrest. Maybe there was a little bit after that. It's not stated. But it sounds like most of the "damage" in terms of lost business from the students was a simple boycott. It's hard to imagine that boycott continued for years because the University didn't tell them to stop or tell them they were wrong. That seems especially suspect factually, although the jury would've found to that effect. Like I said before, I cannot imagine that if the University had formally announced and told the students that they were wrong and needed to go back to the store, that would've changed anything. It likely would have made it worse.

 

The student who stole the wine pled guilty and openly acknowledges that the store owner was interupting a crime in progress. I don't think that is in issue. I don't know if there was merit to the student's perceptions of disparate treatment.

Also, was the issue that Oberlin refused to tell the students that they were wrong, or was it that they refused to remove defamatory materials, such as the statement by the Oberlin Student Senate that accused the Baker of racism which sat mounted in the student center for an entire year?

They could have removed the statement without telling the students that they were wrong. I'm not saying they should have done that. But I don't think the duty was to directly contradict the students.

 

It’s so unlike you. You’re usually open minded and amenable to change.

 

Where did you see acknowledging the crime? I did not see that in what I read although I could've missed it. I'm wondering if you're talking about a plea deal, which we should know by now doesn't necessarily mean he's actually acknowledging that. He was way overcharged as were two other students.

Everything I read in both the appellate opinion in the original articles is that he was interrupted inside the store. By the way, that's not interrupting the crime in progress. You can't shoplift, by definition, while you're still inside the store.

As far as the issue of leaving the Senate resolution up, that seemed pretty insignificant, certainly not enough to support it. I tried to summarize 31 pages of the appellate opinion.

 

Do believe that the appellate court will reduce to amount of damages (or return the case to the trial court to reconsider the amount of damages)? I have very little knowledge of Ohio law but it would seem that even punitive damages although intended to punish the defendant rather than compensate the plaintiff should bear at least some relationship to the amount of compensatory damages.

 

I did not read the section of the opinion on punitive damages. But it was not reduced that I could see from the summary at the outset. I don't know Ohio law, but the summary at the beginning listed the punitive damage verdict as the third issue on appeal and they did not reverse on any issue.