Good day all. Last week I wrote about Oberlin College loosing a lawsuit filed by a local bakery and being ordered to pay $11 million dollars in damages. In the initial judgment, the jury found that there was malice in the actions of Oberlin and several staff members. This led to a second hearing on punitive damages.
Well, the hearing has been held and Oberlin was socked with another $33 million dollars in punitive damages. This was immediately reduced to $22 million due to the laws of the state of Ohio. Still, it’s a nice hit to the Socialist Totalitarian Justice Warriors and their backers. Here are some of the details from Legal Insurrection:
The jury just rendered its verdict on punitive damages in the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case.
Daniel McGraw, our reporter in the courtroom, reports that in addition to the $11.2 million compensatory damages awarded last Friday, the jury awarded a total of $33 million in punitive damages, which will probably be reduced by the court to $22 million because of the state law cap at twice compensatory (it’s not an absolute cap, but probably will apply here). That brings the total damages to $33 million. We will have the breakdown soon. The jury also awarded attorney’s fees, to be determined by the judge.
The breakdown was:
David Gibson – $17.5 million punitive damages
Allyn W. Gibson — $8.75 million punitive damages
Gibson Bros. Inc. (the Bakery) – $6,973,500 punitive damages
The fact that the jury not only awarded the maximum under Ohio law, but went over that by a third is significant. Yes that award will be reduced to the maximum allowed, but the hit on attorney’s fees may add another million or two to the cash Oberlin is going to have to fork over.
The Gibson family was visibly shocked by the amount, as most in the courtroom were thinking the jury’s final punitive damages verdict in the case might top out at maybe $10 million. The fact that it was triple that amount means in many ways that perhaps the jury understood that the whole country was watching.
It didn’t help that the college’s lawyer sent out a letter that basically called the jurors morons. I believe that was entered into evidence in this hearing as well.
Some of the defenders of Oberlin College have claimed that the Gibsons’ were just in it for punishment on this case, and never tried to settle. That could not be further from the truth. According to Lee Plakas, lead attorney for the Gibsons’, a letter was sent before the case was filed in Nov. of 2017 asking for at least some talks on settlement and no answer was sent back (this reporter has seen it).
Never underestimate the blind stupidity of arrogant Progressive lawyers and college administrators.
In early 2018, according to Plakas, two days of talks with a mediator were done, but nothing close to a settlement was achieved. In fact, the talks were initiated by the Gibson’s and “We were ready, willing and able to not have this case go to trial, but Oberlin College and their insurance company seemed to have no interest in settling this case,” Plakas said.
“As they have done throughout this case, they thought that they were above everyone else, and that the rules and working to settle such an egregious case of defaming a good family like the Gibsons’ was beneath them,” he added.
Excuse me? I hadn’t heard about the Insurance company not having any interest in settling the case. Of course, after last week’s verdict, the Insurance company told Oberlin that they weren’t going to cover the judgment and if they didn’t like it, they could perform a highly intricate aerobatic maneuver at a rotating fried breakfast pastry. As for the Gibson’s lawyers, normally they would get one third to one half of the judgment. Not this time.
The jury said that the attorneys’ fees that Gibsons’ would have had to pay out of its verdict awards (often at 30% of jury verdict awards), would now have to be paid by Oberlin College. That could be an additional $10 million put on the school’s plate. Judge Miraldi will decide that as well, not any jury.
Here’s hoping the judge really sticks it to Oberlin, within the letter of the law of course. We don’t want to give Oberlin any hope of winning on appeal, and it looks like the Judge has the same idea as well.
For those who have speculated that these jury verdicts will be pared down substantially or denied by an appeals court, that also is not good speculation. Yes, there will likely be appeals, but in order to win an appeal in a civil tort case, Oberlin College would have to prove that Judge Miraldi and the jury made egregious decision that went against Ohio law. For those of us in the courtroom, and for legal observers who know more about this than me, appeals reversals are unlikely. And Miraldi was very careful in setting the bar pretty high on evidentiary rulings.
So…basically Oberlin is screwed, blued and tattooed. Good. (Care to guess who will never be on a jury hearing a similar case?) It also didn’t hurt that the Gibson’s landed a really good lawyer.
In the end, this was a case that will be one that is pointed to as a “tipping point” of sorts.
Really? How so?
Plakas repeatedly told the jury that this was bigger than them, and that they could make a statement to the country “that this type of behavior is unacceptable to any community because a big collegiate institution like Oberlin College has a responsibility to their community and neighbors, and not just to themselves.”
The problem with Oberlin, like pretty much all of the colleges and universities these days, is that they have become a hard left political indoctrination run and controlled by Marxists, people who have never had to actually deal with the real world.
“What [Oberlin College] did to the Gibsons’ was irrational … and that part of it really angered me as just a private person who saw what was happening to the Gibsons. You would expect a highly regarded university, with a long history of being a great school in this country, would have disregarded what we would think of as a basic thought process,” Plakas continued.
The level of hate and threats coming from the left, and being willfully promulgated by these so called “Centers of Higher Learning” is reaching dangerous levels. When I say dangerous, I mean the threats of violence coming from the people going to these “schools” is reaching a tipping point.
We have seen how the left, since President Trump won, have flat out assaulted anyone they perceived as “Not sufficiently woke” enough. To date, the people they have been attacking have shown remarkable restraint, but those days are probably coming to an end. It’s only a matter of time before someone being attacked by one of these “Social Justice” mobs truly fears for his or her life and pulls a gun and open fires.
This judgment should send a wake up call to all the colleges and universities. Continue with your political indoctrination over actual education, and you may find yourselves being sued into oblivion. Personally, I think it’s time to start going after these groups, organizations and individuals and ruin them financially. Perhaps then, the others might stop and think about the repercussions of their actions.
Thatisall
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