Running racism in America thread

It wasn't a pronouncement from Duke, it was the painful cry of a single athlete

 

The argument is that punitive damage have to be so large as to deter the next person or entity from yelling racist. In today’s society its the worst thing you can say to someone, maybe the equal of pedophile. But pedo is so outrageous that unless there’s context no one believes it. Oberlin owns the town and they yelled racist, they yelled it without evidence an when they were confronted with information that contradicted their screaming, they continued it anyway. Oberlin yelled it at a friend of the school’s for a decade to appease children and their knee jerk reaction to everything. But they have endowment of over a billion, so this wont effect the school in any way

 

If it were the painful cry of a student from Weber State or Rider College or Fordam University, it would have been lost in the News an Notes, maybe. When it says DUKE on the front of the Jersey, the Media pays attention

 

That contradicts nothing I said. As an attorney I'm well aware of the idea behind punitive damages. My point is that Oberlin's endowment -- while considerable -- is nothing compared to a wealth of a corporation like McDonald's (or others) and the punitive award they gave is waaaayyyyyyy out of whack with what was necessary to accomplish its purpose. Any school -- even with a 1B endownment -- will absolutely feel a judgment of 5M in compensatory damages, another couple million in punitives plus interest. The size of this award becomes a big windfall for the family. Good for them, of course. But again, when the self-styled hard-bitten realists bootlick for big corporations decrying relatively modest punitives awards for much more grievous PHYSICAL harm are amen-ing this one because they don't like the smug fucks in Oberlin administration, that makes a joke out of the justice system.

 

Actually, it got picked up from social media by the players aunt. Did more people care because it was Duke question? I don't know. But Black Twitter is a powerful entity. And it's still different from what you said making it sound like Duke orchestrated it. I think the aunt went public because she was pissed at the Duke coach didn't protect her player.

 

And what did the coach have to say?

 

Don’t put yourself in the same category as witches.

 

I think the issue is that the punitives in the McDonalds case were too low. Yes the Oberlin quantum is disproportionate, but that doesn’t mean it’s the problem. With hindsight, I’d argue the McDs case was laughably low.

 

There's also the non-trivial fact that the McDonalds case was 30 years ago. The numbers ain't exactly comparable.

 

Yeah but $1.9M back then would be worth about 4M today -- a quarter of the 20M punitives award in the Oberlin case (and the original punitives award was 33M, reduced under a state punitives cap).. And Stella Liebeck, the McDonald's plaintiff was, again turned in a national joke and slandered as greedily seeking a jackpot through a frivolous lawsuit that was, in reality, anything but. And the punitives award was -- as Tighthead concedes -- laughably low if you look at the the actual underlying facts. And she never even saw close to it -- McDonald's appealed the award and she settled for a confidential amount that was surely less. Yet NOBODY is questioning the size of the punitives award in the Oberlin case because the Oberlin folks are such caricatures. I get the bloodlust people have against the "woke mob" (though in most cases I question how big and influential that woke mob really is, for the most part -- though this case was an exception). And again, I'm fine with punitive damages as a means of stopping a bad actor from deciding that compensatory damages are just the cost of doing business. But the inconsistency bothers me. I mean, this bakery is still operating and despite the bullshit it had to contend with, it was actually pretty short lived. I would even guess that it's probably more profitable now than it was before the incident even occurred. And Oberlin isn't such a huge, well-heeled institution that it wouldn't feel something more proportionate. This was truly a political award.

 

So.

BYU / Duke

- Something happened.

- Nothing happened.