I've done quite a bit of work with Oberlin College over the years. Some great people there and the campus is beautiful, but the culture is primed for this kind of reaction and I get the impression that the administration doesn't have the guts to do anything but go along with it.
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.
Even when I was heading to college in '95 Oberlin was known as the SJW school. It was the "most woke", most liberal, most feminist, most LGBTQ+ friendly, etc. Those aren't necessarily negative attributes, but they are VERY EASY to weaponize, whether intentionally or not ... and things like the situation with Gibson's are the result.
Even before then, Oberlin was the first college in the US to admit women on a permanent basis, and one of the first to admit black students. Back before the civil war it was an important sanctuary for people freeing enslavement in the south, with the college and town both providing support and resistance to people trying to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. The kind of radicalism it has known for has done a lot of good, though as we see here it can lead to bad as well.
> 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.
> 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.
As a parent who has paid full freight for two children, I’m happy to have saved and I’m happy to command a salary that makes me ineligible for most aid.
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.
"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.)
Their annual revenue is ~$180M. If any appreciable portion of their student body turns on them it's going to start to hurt very quickly. A sober assessment says that very few students would actually leave but there's a tail risk that it turns into something unsustainable.
> My guess is Gibson's won't see a penny any time soon.
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 article asserts that there are still effectively boycots taking place. If this was actually organized in any capacity by college officials, couldn't they be found in contempt of court and criminally charged as well?
By "doesn't have a choice" I'm not sure what you mean. Certainly their lawyers could have chosen not to appeal upon reasonable grounds ("we're likely to lose, and that will cause greater fines").
Any defendant assessed a 36MM penalty is going to appeal, to the limit of their ability to appeal, as is their right. Gibson's is going to get 36MM, and they can wait a little while to get it.
If you read the article their appeal to the state supreme court actually increased the judgement from $31 million to $36 million, so continuing to appeal may have been a poor choice.
Not quite. That was for structured settlements where the defendant had already agreed to the terms and started paying. The parent was talking about borrowing against a pending matter that hasn’t yet settled.
i’m sure there’s some company that would feel confident in their math and stats to pay out x million to the defendant immediately, rather than 36m, in exchange for having the rights to the claim/pending payment assigned to them?
the only real question is how much lower x million is from 36m.
The legal system doesn't care about your mother's dementia, your baker's wife's ALS, your husband's pancreatic cancer or anything else. Whether Stevie Wonder came to your bakery or not is irrelevant.
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.
Once again, no. The jury awarded $11MM in actual damages, and the balance was punitive --- punitive damages are communicative and have nothing at all to do with the value of the business, beyond that they're capped at a low multiple of the actual damages.
Punitive damages aren't communicative unless the cost has a real impact on the defendant. Otherwise they just disappear in the rounding error of a wealthy defendant's expenses.
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.
They're communicative in intent. All I'm trying to say is that they're explicitly not tied to the economic damage of the tort. And that, constitutionally, there's a cap on punitive damages: due process prevents courts from just making up ruinous sums on the fly.
You're right, of course. Punitive damages are limited. One unfortunate effect of that is that the very wealthy rarely face meaningful consequences.
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.
They serve a purpose here though, to get the college to slow their roll when it comes to attacking businesses without the full story. Sounds like a mob reaction to me, juries can be right sometimes, ya know?
No but people care about those things and a university wrongly abusing a small business with heated claims then trying to bail on paying their just desserts is a shame.
I don't understand what's interesting about this story. They won an enormous judgement (I think understandably --- that they were clearly in the right in this case, and they were wronged by a wealthy organization). They judgement was appealed. The appeal failed. Oberlin is going to pay. The courts will force them to pay. Seems simple. Bari Weiss knows the answer to the question posed by the headline; she could have just, you know, added the sentence "Yes."
I wasn't familiar with Oberlin before reading this story, but I found it nonetheless interesting as an example of how your life can be turned around quickly.
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.
Bari Weiss is well aware the money is coming soon because there’s no way to appeal any more. What she needed was an example of “wokeness gone mad”, so her readers can confirm whatever biases they hold. They pay her $5/month for that and boy does she deliver.
I'm glad Weiss is brave enough to do this, TBH. I don't think all the causes she promotes are great, but I appreciate that she has been willing to give up her previous career to avoid being complicit.
Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
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.
The story is the extent of personal responsibility for race baiting by the administration amounts to having to jump ship & the cost to the students for supporting the SJW kowtowing is in the 10s of millions.
There's nothing new about that story; it was extensively discussed on HN at the time of the verdict. The article misleadingly suggests further wrongdoing by Oberlin, which is grossly false. Oberlin is appealing, as is their right, and losing, as is fair.
The wheels of justice turn slowly for everybody. If the headline for this story was "$36MM defamation judgement takes years to appeal", nobody would click.
This entire situation was grossly mismanaged by the College. Their Counselor to Students encouraged the protest, provided them with hot chocolate, gave them a safe space to rest and recover in. That official was never disciplined for his role in this, and a couple of years later moved on to another role elsewhere in the country.
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.
The school put out a statement that implied that this wasn't an isolated incident.
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.
Instead, the school proposed a deal where, in the future, if a student were caught shoplifting, we’d call the dean instead of the police.
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.
The school had no business being involved, and beyond no business suggesting that Gibsons report crimes to the school instead of the police. There isn't much controversy here; the school is going to lose $36MM owing to their poor judgement.
It is shocking how schools begin to act like quasi governments, trying to regulate things off campus only because people who happen to be individuals are involved. I’ve lived in a number of college towns and seen it regularly.
I find the other two responses to your question bizarre considering that the answer is in the paragraph directly above the line you quoted:
> 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.
Does the school have some kind of CSI racism squad? Keeping tabs on every micro aggression for every business partner? Why would ANYONE do business with people like this?
The idea of "in loco parentis" has a long history in higher education and the pendulum has swung from strict limits on student conduct to minimal limits.
How can you "refuse to pay"? Certainly this should only incur more penalties or perhaps a criminal prosecution against whomever is ignoring the court order?
I remember the headlines when a bank refused to pay a judgement and the sheriff showed up later to foreclose on a local branch. That might be the next move here.
I think he used some combination of a pension and the unlimited homestead exemption in Florida to shield most of his assets. Since we don't have debtors prisons there is not much you can do to make people pay.
You don’t have to pay, but interest accrues and every time you appeal and lose you end up paying a big portion of the winner’s legal costs, so you are just digging your own grave if you’ve got a loser case that you keep prolonging.
There are more than a few corporations that follow "scorched earth" tactics when they're sued.
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".
Technically they have 14 days after the denial by the Ohio supreme court during which they could appeal to the US Supreme Court. so until that windows has closed, the initial court won't force the issue.
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).
> While the appeal is pending, you don't have to pay.
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.
The article is missing specific legal details so it's hard to tell what's really going on. In general Gibson's Bakery could go back to the trial court and seek a legal order to enforce the judgment, possibly by ordering Oberlin College's bank to directly transfer funds. If the college defies a specific court order then eventually the court could jail college employees for contempt, but that wouldn't be a criminal prosecution.
Interest starts accruing when the judgement is first handed down. Sometimes, courts will require the loser to post a bond before allowing them to appeal the verdict.
I went to Oberlin. Yes it's too 'woke' but this story is actually backwards from my perspective. There's more to this story and unfortunately it has nothing to do with Gibson's.
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.
They got $11MM in actual damages. If Oberlin's actions essentially ruined the business, that doesn't seem crazy; further, actual damages have to be tied to, you know, actual demonstrable damages. You could probably look up the transcript to see how actual damages were argued by both sides.
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.
> 36MM is completely absurd from an economic perspective
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.
If Microsoft destroyed my house out of malice, would the value of my house be a reasonable fine? Would it discourage Microsoft from doing it again? Would Microsoft even notice?
The revenue of Oberlin does seem much more relevant than the revenue of the bakery here to me.
It's probably not absurd...In US libel cases the plaintiff has to open their books to the courts which is how they create the damage estimates. Those facts are probably sealed so we don't have the whole picture.
Is it absurd though? Their business existed for 139 years(or something) but literally over 100 years in business. You also need to factor in potential future earnings etc; Would the Bakery make 35mm? Probably not. Will the University? With ease. Both need to be taken into account, not just one.
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
IANAL but the original plea just says sums in excess of $25k for each count [1]. It seems like the damages are set as a deterrent and not based on the actual value of the defamation [2]:
> 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.
From a non-American perspective, these sums are ludicrous in any case. However, they don't seem to be inconsistent with other big American payouts for various life-altering incidents, whether aligned with one end of the political spectrum or not.
If you realize how much money these colleges make and have in their endowment, then you understand any less of an amount won't even register with those who run the college. It seems like the amount awarded is actually on the low side and should probably have been higher to send a message to not join the "woke" mob and get the whole story before acting. Yes, I would say the same for "alt-right" mobs as well.
You have to make them hurt though. Oberlin college needs to feel the pain, it's not just to make the store "whole". 36 million seems on the low side to make them hurt and not pull this again, that's why we have punitive damages. Also it's not just about how much money will the store earn over an adult lifetime, as the college's actions greatly endangered that possibility. The judgement like I said seems a little on the low side to convince a college to not do this same kind of "woke punishment" in the future.
No, Oberlin had opportunities to settle. Instead, they chose to (in lefty terms) "double down." That means that if you fail, the cost goes up. It was, in retrospect, an unwise choice on their part.
I grew up in a college town, and it's a weird experience in some ways. The college provides so much, jobs obviously but also opportunities for classes, concerts, and other things that wouldn't normally be in a city that size. But at the same time there are always troubles with a minority of the students, exacerbated by the fact that you are continually getting new people who don't know the history of things, or the reason they are a certain way. Oberlin, both city and college, seem like an even more exaggerated version of what I grew up with and it's a shame to see how a 100+ year positive relationship can turn sour so quickly.
I went to an expensive school with sometimes-tense "townie" relations.
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.
This is sad. Regardless of whether they'll get the money or whether the cost is justified, it's a bad state of affairs that an accusation and a protest etc. can more or less destroy a small (long standing) business like this. Things like "innocent until proven guilty" etc. are time tested and really need to be held up.
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.
There is in fact no "innocent until proven guilty" principle regarding accusations of misconduct. People can in fact make ill-founded or shaky accusations of bad behavior of all sorts. Our pesky First Amendment ensures that no law will pass establishing a statutory right to be free of criticism, even grave criticism.
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.
This makes sense but it wasn't my point. Your post was informative though. Thanks.
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.
As someone from the UK I'm a bit confused why he can't seem to get the college to pay him? If a court has ruled that the college has to pay how can they avoid this? In the UK if a company failed to pay a debt then ultimately you can apply to the court for a winding up petition which if they didn't resolve the situation the company would be liquidated by the court.
Ya it's only been two days since the state supreme court ruling. Oberlin could keep appealing to the feds, which they may do. Imo the "when will we see our money" is a bit silly; an emotional appeals when this process always entails a ton of legal appeals before the …final_final_forReal.PDF decision is handed down.
For more than 30 million dollars I wouldn’t be surprised if they give it shot on first amendment grounds. The gamble would be the additional legal fees v.s. the chance of success.
From a UK perspective, it is not obvious that they can keep appealing. Here there needs to be a legal basis for an appeal. I am not sure about civil cases, but the criminal case grounds for appeal appear to be:
* 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
It looks like the Ohio supreme court just declined to hear the case yesterday, and before that they were appealing the ruling. IANAL but I would assume that it's only now that Gibson's will be able to really go after them for the money.
That's insane. The robbers should be in jail. Imagine being an average Joe, robbing your local liquor store, and getting out fine with a public apology.
Worth pointing out they didn't just rob the store, but they assaulted the store employee who tried to stop them[1]:
> 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.
I was going to observe that throwing down in the street with multiple petty thieves seems like a mistake in general, but at your link we discover Gibson was actually assaulted in the store when he tried to take a picture of somebody in a coat with wine bottles sticking out. Avoiding this kind of terribly escalating situation will require careful consideration.
To be fair the criminal justice system in this country basically feels like blackmail since very rarely does it end in a trial, but instead the threats of massive charges/prison time unless you give in and come to a deal.
"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.[9][11][12] Their plea deals carried no jail time in exchange for restitution, the public statement, and a promise of future good behavior."
(they may have been jailed while under arrest, but their plea deals kept them out of jail after that)
There was a post about second order thinking a while ago. And things like this are something I think about.
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.
Without getting into the facts of the case itself, I’ll take the word of the article’s author that she won the lawsuit and the two appeals. Is there not a mechanism for enforcing payment? I get it if the defendant doesn’t actually have the money. But can’t the court go to the college’s banks and force the transfer? The fact that that isn’t happening makes me feel like I’m missing part of the story.
Oberlin will end up paying, no matter what, but it's going to take years. Successful defamation lawsuits like that are rare. Of course all the parties involved into conspiring against the bakery on Oberlin's side have now moved on and failed upward, none of these individuals have to live with the consequences of their actions.
My understanding is that a clerk from the Supreme Court will deliver the decision (refusal to hear appeal) to the lower court, and then it's up to a constable to enforce the order.
What happens next, I'm not sure. But they can't just defy a court order.
I remember that story. An absolute travesty. Theft is theft no matter the thief race. All that insanity and energy wasted in the name of "inclusivity"... If people want to "fix injustices", well start making colleges like Oberlin free of charge for poor students, not try to harass a bakery into dropping charges when thieves are of a certain color of skin...
There's something that I find horrifically condescending towards people of color in the woke community; the excuses for theft and violence as if somehow people are unable to control themselves or should avoid consequences for their actions has a stench of racism and superiority complex to me.
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.
Ah yes, all those thousands of engineers over the decades who are "using roman numerals wrong", rather than using a well understood system of prefixes that is just not SI.
It's not logical, but it is a standard on the finance and business side of things. MM is universally "million" there, be it dollars, liters, barrels, etc.
She should look into selling the $36M debt to a firm specializing in such things. (Wikipedia claims that Oberlin's endowment is ~30X larger.) Far better to get paid (say) 97 cents on the dollar up front, then get on with her life & business.
Companies that "specialize in such things" rarely offer 50 cents on the dollar. Payments that high tend to be for "sure things" like slow Accounts Receivables.
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).
Commercial A/R is a different world. The seller ain't selling the debt because he's confident of a quick & sure collection. A load of things about the transactions which produced the debt might be disputed (the thingies they sold us failed to pass QC...). Every line on every invoice can probably be argued by a debtor trying to weasel out of paying. Such grief can really run up the overhead on collecting.
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.)
They wouldn't get 97 cents on the dollar. I'm far from an expert on these matters but I've seen these types of deals before (much much much smaller judgements though). From my limited experienced, for an iron-clad, as close to guaranteed as possible, case you might be looking at 80 cents on the dollar? Still a sufficient amount that I agree they should really try and sell off at least part of the judgement. It occurs to me that it's possible the Gibsons already did do that.
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
Nobody's going to file a lien. The story is misleading. Oberlin appealed the verdict; they'll pay when the courts force them to, and not before, as would any defendant in a $36MM defamation case.
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.
There's an old convention of M = mille = thousand, and the modern convention of M = million. To avoid confusion, MM is sometimes used to be very clear it means million, especially in accountancy and legal circles.
This has arguably outlived anyone seriously using M=mille, but the practice carries on
It depends on the state and the court. Some only allow for actual/measured damages. Some allow for punitive damages. Some let the juries pull numbers out of their exhaust ports.
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.
A trial is held, and the defendant is found liable or not. If they're liable, a damages phase occurs where both sides argue about the amount of compensatory damages owed. Compensatory damages have to be linked to actual damages; they're factual, not expressive. The jury can then decide that punitive damages are owed; a punitive damages phase occurs, where both sides argue how much should be awarded punitively. Punitive damages are expressive and not linked to actual financial losses, beyond that they're capped at a low multiple of the compensatory damages.
Oberlin was assessed $11M in compensatory damages.
As a thought experiment, let's assume the best or worst intentions of the participants depending on their relation to the case:
- The blogger is cynically making money by appealing to conservatives
- Hacker News commenters are privileged and prejudiced
- The family is prejudiced, and altering their story in bad faith
- The college and students meant well and thought there was genuine prejudice involved
Even in this extreme version of the scenario, I still think the situation is terrible and that the family's life was irreparably and unfairly altered. Do they deserve tens of millions? Maybe not, but then again America is the land of big things happening. They do deserve some reparation based on the facts as delivered in the court transcript.
I see commenters here flagging the story, dismissing its relevance or validity with various arguments but this doesn't really hold up at a second glance, even if you take into account the context of culture war grifting.
So the courts decide calling the family and the store racist was libel and slanderous, and it was upheld after sever appeals. Despite that, you are trying to claim that the Gibson's are racist? I don't understand what point you're making. I'm sure these comments were taken into account in the court proceedings and decisions, so why bring it up here. I'm not condoning what was said, but this puts nothing in a new light, as the court already ruled on what you are claiming.
I suppose that depends entirely on what "*" is blanking out. Given the context, the grand-kid seems to be upset at the protestors. If "*" is a racist slur, then yeah... (still says nothing for sure about the parents or grand parents, though) but if it is just some general swear word, then he sounds more like an angry person with a potty mouth.
Here's the full post, but the bad words are still redacted (which is insane to redact "evidence," leaving us to assume he used a slur, but whatever). Based on context I think it's probably just a swear word, but the post doesn't make him look good. He even says this situation is "making [him] racist" and says people deserve to die.
Sure, I read the article. If he had used a racial slur, most media would report it something like "used the 'n-word'". They did not, and thus I can only guess he did not (or perhaps the version the media got was redacted? I can't imagine why a court would redact a bad word, racial slur or not...)
This is also the grand kid of the business owners. There can be significant differences across generations of families in attitudes.
Sometimes the court can uphold the law and yet an undesirable state of affairs can persist. Those comments were racist, and furthermore it seems the family has not acknowledged that fact or apologized for it. This would definitely affect my likelihood of shopping there--all else being equal, I'd greatly prefer to have business owners in my community who don't espouse racist beliefs.
I can no longer edit my comment and feel the need to add to it: upon reading the FB post (https://tinyurl.com/2h9rmkzu) this points to the bigger issue that is worth at least mentioning. Often people who are not very eloquent try their best to state their (sometimes naive but often not ill-meaning) views, instead of being treated as the beginning of a conversation (in which the person is validated and a dialogue forms), their words are publicized and they are demonized, which polarizes the issue. It is deeply unfortunate that in this case somebody chose to publicize rather than attempting to start a dialogue.
The facebook posts made by Allyn Gibson make it clear he is racist, which is how he earned that reputation. The court didn't hold Oberlin College responsible to pay because Allyn wasn't racist, he is racist. They held the college responsible because an administrator was on site for the protests and handing out fliers making it seem as though the college endorsed the protests. If that administrator had not been there, the college would not be responsible for any damages as it's otherwise perfectly legal for any of its students to protest anything they like including racist individuals and their family establishments.
In my opinion, the statement "not my fault most black ppl around my area suck" is pretty racist. Most people in my life would as well. The court's ruling, and the laws and rules and standards they used to make it, do not dictate the way me or mine form our opinions. There's a reading of this story where there could also be outrage at punishment for calling a racist a racist.
Uhm, this comment section is literally full of people attacking the students for exactly that and this article puts a frame on things that makes it clear that they may well have been reasonable. Like idk as someone said the court made a decision, but I would judge this kid to be racist based on the statements in the article. And yes I did read the article. That is totally relevant
I've said it before and I'll say it again: since when did America give two s*ts about any of our experiences? If I missed the "people care about what happened to me because of my skin color" train, please let me know where that station was. It's a huge mistake to equate violent crime with being disadvantaged.
For whatever its worth, I attended, and cried at, Kelsey Hightower's life story. The goodness of someone making it out of a really hard situation is cool and inspiring, but the badness of crime being legitimized on the basis of someone's life experience is deeply upsetting and dangerous. There is also this tiny little detail about that idea being antithetical to liberalism itself, but we don't need to get into that.
Well for what it’s worth, this was simple shoplifting and the situation was escalated by the store owner.
I’m not suggesting shoplifting is also not a crime, but it isn’t violent. And when somebody is chasing and grappling you it is a natural reaction to fight back.
So basically it seems like here the violence was perpetrated by the white guy, if we are taking the facts at face value.
The younger Allyn Gibson tried to take a picture of the shoplifter as evidence and he was violently attacked. I don't know where you got the idea that he was the aggressor, but that simply is not the case.
The courts determined they were wrongly cancelled (not "supposedly"). All three students pled guilty, admitting there was no racism.
I actually do think the college was right about contacting the dean first. In particular, the store should have excellent security cameras, and when somebody steals, you send the forensic-grade evidence to the dean, asking if they would like the photos to be shared with the police or whether the university should handle the matter internally.
Because it would be better for the university to talk to and then exit misbehaving students from the school rather than throwing them to the legal system. Also you probably misunderstood what sending a message like this to the dean would accomplish.
These are adults, not minors. They have the rights of adults and are expected to behave like adults, and they also receive the consequences of adults. Being the members of a 40k/semester institute, whether that is a university or a country club, should not excuse you from your criminal behavior.
If someone is a member of the local golf club, should the golf club be called to met out punishment if the member swindles some pensioners out of their savings?
I'm not sure why the college would even propose such an arrangement. Do they actually want to be held accountable regarding their response to students who break the law, particularly if it is ohff campus? Do they want to deal with lawsuits from those who are shown the door? (In this case, it may have been cheaper but it sounds like it has more to do with the college administration stepping in when they should have simply told the affected students to legal aid.)
The legal system is far from perfect, but it is often better than the alternative.
So the store owner/manager/employee has to figure out first if they were robbed by a college student in order to figure out who to call? Also it seems much less likely for the store to receive compensation and may lead to more instances if the school can't or won't make a punishment that disincentivizes others. The police and court system can do that.
The statement '"the world" has "mostly tried to stamp [minorities] from existence"' is not propaganda, and if you squint enough, is probably true, but it's also so broadly stupid and over generalized as to be mostly meaningless. It's not wrong, but it paints a picture wherein racists and "the world" are equated haphazardly - the danger being that one can invert the idea into "its okay to commit a particular crime if the only person it hurts is guilty by virtue of their group ownership". People get particularly sensitive about that conclusion - especially if they've read the history of the 20th century.
It's not okay to commit crimes against other people because we're all protected equally under the law and because every human being deserves respect and contains something divine. This is the most basic tenant of liberalism. It has for sure not been implemented equally or fairly, and boy-howdy is there a lot of work to do, but I'd venture that suggesting that the baby ought to be thrown out with the bathwater does border on dangerous propaganda.
Well, Hacker News is a community with a tendency to embrace contrarianism. It was similar with all the COVID stuff too – articles with less mainstream takes on the negative impact of lockdowns or the benefits of Ivermectin were quite frequently and surprisingly popular.
To some extent this makes sense – there's not much interest in discussing "<thing> that everyone thought was the case turns out be correct!" and there's more meat in controversial issues.
The thing is, clickbait is popular, regardless of how much a particular community might feel they're above it. nd I'll wager there are more than a few people out there who value particular viewpoints more as a direct result of their unpopularity; we all do it sometimes, and it's a way to make yourself feel special.
Regardless of all that, I do generally agree that this obvious culture-war flame-bait Bari Weiss-backed blog post has nothing of interest to contribute to this community. But people have the right to get enthusiastic about whatever they want; best to just flag it and move on.
Yep. People complain about left leaning issues on HN and ask "why are there politics on HN?" but stories like this get upvoted as well.
There are strong libertarian and authoritarian streaks in some comments on these threads that always make me disappointed.
Minorities in tech are doing just fine. I get sick and tired of article after article trying to argue the opposite based on a handful of biased anecdotes, usually painting non-minorities as conniving bastards.
Meanwhile, there are actual people and businesses being crushed under mob social justice, a far scarier phenomenon.
IT People used to talk on Usenet, then a bunch of young free software guys started Slashdot, which took VC and corporatized, then a seed fund started this web site. The medium determines the message and this board is filled with white, upper middle class born people doing tech finance. Not much of a surprise the front page comes down on the side of the white against the black 95% of the time.
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.