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

Are we supposed to be educated by listening to a podcast that interviews the person leading one side of the case? Seriously? That's not how you educate yourself. That's like interviewing Kim Jong-un to figure out how great things are in North Korea.

 

If you bothered to listen to this you would see the perspective of the Gibsons and how they have been a part of that community for over a century. How they have been huge advocates for civil rights and how ultimately they have been nearly destroyed by rage-addicted lunatics fully supported by the university.

I've seen you go page after page after page on this thread rationalizing how this was not a legitimate lawsuit against Oberlin but I haven't seen you comment on the actual events in question. What do you feel the Gibsons did here in error? Why do you feel like the actions of Oberlin were completely reasonable?

 

I'm not going to waste time listening to Bari Weiss's podcast. I bothered to read the court opinion. I don't need to listen to a one-sided podcast to "educate" myself.

If you saw me going from page to page discussing this and have to ask these questions, you clearly didn't read what my objections are. Based on what I've read, I don't think the Gibsons have done a single thing in error. I also don't think Oberlin's actions "were completely reasonable." But I believe deeply in free speech. Free speech brings with it collateral damage.

The idea that joining a protest and handing out fliers can leave you liable for tens of millions of dollars of damages if the information you're relying on is wrong is hugely problematic to me. It's the same reason I was happy when Nick Sandmann's lost his lawsuits (well, the ones that refused to settle).

Does that suck for the Gibsons? Yes. But we all make sacrifices in the name of free speech in this country. I've yet to see somebody offer evidence that Oberlin did anything beyond what I think should be protected by free speech. With the way that segregationists and cops have tried to weaponize civil liability to punish activists and protesters for exercising their rights, I am not comfortable with what happened here.

 

So much more than that occurred.

 

Go on.

 

If they were victimized that badly, of which I am highly skeptical given the source, the system certainly more than protected them, from the police intervention to the tort system. But then again, it was designed to do that.

 

Their free speech, and their cancellation of contracts, supported the narrative that the Gibsons were racists. Is that acceptable for you?

 

What?

 

Why did Oberlin tell their suppliers to cancel the contracts with the vendors?

 

I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make? I can't help but think like a lawyer, it's what I am.

Are you suggesting that if they were within their rights legally to cancel the contract, they shouldn't have been able to do so? Have you read the actual opinions? And how are you certain as to the accuracy of the perceptions?

There's just so much presumption in the way you frame your question

 

Not a lawyer so don't usually think like one. To a layman, ie juror, their decision to cancel the contracts in support of the protestors, who were pushing the narrative that the family was racist, supported the narrative that they were racists.

 

That's one way to look at it. It might even be true. But even if it was, is that legally actionable? I guess the answer was yes, based on the verdict, but if we think about it, we wouldn't normally support that as the basis for legal damages.

But everyone's starting from the presumption that white people are never really racist, that black people think they're racist when they're not, and then it's just unfair to be perceived that way because it's just never true. So we create special legal business rules that we don't enforce in any other arena.

By the way, juries are lay people, but they're still supposed to apply the law. Not saying they always do faithfully, but that is the oath they take.

 

I should forget this discussion because it seems so futile. But here's another hypothetical.

Based upon my recall for my reading to the pellet opinion, and I'm going from memory so I may be a bit off, the main thing they were tagged within terms of the way you describe what you think was done wrong with tortious interference with the contract. Basically saying that they not vendors that did business with them to quit doing business with the bakery.

At least under Florida law, and I suspect ohio, tortious interference is only actionable if it's unprivileged or wrongful. You can interfere with someone else's advantageous relationships, including contractual relationships, under certain privileges, most notably competition. Competition is an affirmative defense to an option for tortious interference.

Let's say that one of the Gibsons' competitors wanted to get that contract and told the student body that they should pressure administrators to change contractors based upon something like being locally sourced, or just food that the students would like better. If that pressure campaign worked, should that be actionable? Should they be liable for damages?

Mind you, scenarios like this happen all the time. Just to use a common example, every time there's carriage fee disputes with cable companies or cable providers they will tell consumers to demand that their cable provider pay the demanded carriage fees to the right told her. We have disputes all the time in this area over Lightning games and Rays games for local cable providers. That's just considered business.

My point is, under a free enterprise system, we give a lot of leeway before we consider that someone who loses business can sue a decision maker that is acting within their rights. If you read the opinion, you will see that there was a lot of disputed evidence or even other explanations that were not necessarily disbelieved or ruled to be false.

But we're all looking at it under a presumptive lens. Mine may come from a different perspective, but does a fish recognize the water it is swimming in?

 

From my limited view, the family had a long history of supporting equal rights that was destroyed by false allegations from a crowd too quick to claim racism. That quick claim was given substantial credibility by the actions the college took. Hence the damage and the reward. I dont know enough about the other actions of sr college admin but I seem to recall that they supported the protestors claims in some way without ever examining the substance of the claims. It seems they were quick to a false conclusion because that was the popular thingbto do rather than look for facts and temper emotion with reality of the historical actions of the family. Jmo. Appreciate the discussion and learn a lot from your posts, just offering a perspective that would seem to be consistent with the jury decision.

 

I wasn't aware that the student dropped the bottles of wine prior to running out of the store. It seems to be acknowledged by everyone including the university and the student through his plea that he was attempting to shoplift. Attempting to shoplift would be considered an inchoate offense? So stopping an attempt to shoplift inside the store would be considered stopping a crime in progress. If I have that wrong so be it.

I honesty don't know what the university's duty was in this situation. Maybe it was a thin case or a bad verdict. From what I read online it looks like university employees assisted in printing and distributing the flyers and the university allowed the student senate's resolution up for a year. There is also suspending the contract and I don't know how that relates to defamation. Maybe the jury believed that the university knew the claims were false and still suspended the contract? If I were more interested I would read the Plaintiff's brief. Not for the correct law, but at least to understand what the theory was.

 

Yes. I can cancel my contracts with you based on my erroneous belief that you're a racist. You may or may not have a contractual claim against me if my cancellation violates our contract, but that's not in and of itself defamation.

Here's the thing, Oberlin can still be in the wrong, even if the outcome of this case is wrong. Compare it to the Nick Sandmann case. The media's reporting was wrong. But the kid doesn't get to recover millions of dollars just because they were wrong. Sometimes, free speech produces bad outcomes and collateral damage. But it's still worth protecting and preserving.

My concern here is that liability seems to have stemmed from two events: (1) the dean's participation in the protest and distribution of the flier and (2) the school posting the student senate resolution. The students and administrators may well have had their facts wrong, but I don't think either of those things should support $36 million in liability simply because they believed false rumors regarding racial discrimination. That chills free speech.

 

Hard to get a fix on what happened on the criminal end. We do know that the student was confronted inside the store with three bottles of wine we know that he was accused of being ready to shoplift and using a fake ID. We know he said it was his intention to pay. I too read the bottle or bottles were dropped. We know that the accusation/altercation continued outside and the two girls that were his friends got involved. We know the police eventually intervened and charged the three students with some form of assault that was a felony and also some form of felony theft at least to the young man that was inside the store.

I don’t take as much from the pleas as everyone else does. I know one of the things that the college administrators were angry at was the extent of the charges. They felt that they were overcharged. I don’t know the particulars here but I know that’s pretty routine and I know that police are generally untruthful and generally will slant their actions to the white store owner over the black student.

Those are generalities. It’s possible none occurred here, but one would be naïve to conclude factual accuracy based upon police accounts and charging decisions. I view them with a presumption of falsehood and excess, especially in racial situations, where police are implicitly charged with maintaining the caste system.

I find it a bit incongruent that the store owner was accusing him of both being ready to shoplift and being ready to use a fake ID. Using a fake ID, by definition, presumes you’re going through the checkout line. It is of course possible that he was accusing him of being ready to pay for one of the bottles with a fake ID and concealing the others on his person with the intent of taking them without paying. But it’s incongruous.

What seems most likely is a college student was going to buy alcohol with a fake ID, an incredibly egregious offense there’s almost never occurred in any other college town and only is perpetrated by hardened criminals. This terrible criminal was probably doing so to try to impress women he was with. He was confronted and felt humiliated and left, dropping the bottles in anger or when he was grabbed.

This highly enlightened young store owner, who we know was personally enlightened because his family was generations prior, as that always follows, followed him outside and tried to physically apprehend him personally (the appellate opinion talks about a store owner being permitted to use force in such occasion).

Police were called, arrived, and charged all three black students with some degree of felony assault and the young man with felony theft. Which is possible but amazing as they viciously assaulted the young enlightened store owner but apparently didn’t try to leave before police got there, unless the police got there faster than they could leave, and the young civil rights activist never reported any injuries.

We know other students didn’t like what happened and administrators thought the students were treated more harshly by the store and the system than they should have been, believing that none of the alleged conduct, even if true, amounted to a felony.

I could go on, but I see plenty of reason to view the limited facts through the hermeneutic of US history and present, even if that history and present are being formally suppressed at the request and celebration of the dominant caste, which only further confirms their essential truth.

 

I don’t think it was just believing false rumors…
Yea t was pretty clear from the beginning that the allegations were false. Anyone looking at the situation could tell this was not racism. Oberlin Dean chose to join the attack DESPITE the overwhelming evidence. This was an attack on a small mom and pop establishment. It was punching down on an innocent.
So why? Why was the Dean so quick to join in? Why was the flyer allowed to stay up fro a year despite overwhelming evidence this was not racism?

 

I'm not sure how it would be clear from the beginning the allegations were false or that anybody should have known this wasn't racial discrimination. See Tampa's post. Why did the Dean join in? Because she believed the rumors and cares for her students and racial justice. As for the flier, it didn't stay up. I imagine you're talking about the student senate resolution, so we're now imposing liability on a college because of the student senate's speech? Yeah, that only heightens my free speech concerns.

 

Lawyer
We will never agree on this… clearly. However, it is settled law at this point. Judgement has been passed, appeals have been made. It’s over. Oberlin was found to have helped damage the reputation of a small local mom and pop store.
The Dean could have spent 10 minutes looking into what happened. From the very first time this story hit it was clear this wasn’t racism. It was clear racism was in fact being used to cover for guilty college students.