Now We Have A Precedent. Ho Ho Ho.

Oberlin – perennial contender for the most obnoxiously “progressive” college in the country – gets hit with an $11 million defamation judgment after its social justice legion falsely accused a local bakery of racism:

A Lorain County jury ordered Oberlin to pay $11 million in compensatory damages to Gibson’s Bakery, a local fixture since 1885 that was beset by protests and racism allegations after three black students were arrested for shoplifting the day after the 2016 presidential election.
“The jury saw that Oberlin College went out of their way to harm a good family and longtime business in their community for no real reason, and the jury said we aren’t going to tolerate that in our community anymore,” Owen Rarric, an attorney for the Gibsons, told Legal Insurrection.

The award, which could triple at Tuesday’s hearing on punitive damages, came as a warning to universities that encourage social-justice activism as student protests spill from the campus to the local community.

The protests started after three black students were arrested for shoplifting.

And what of that?

Meanwhile, the three students pleaded guilty to shoplifting and aggravated trespass while issuing statements absolving the bakery of racism.
In 2017, Gibson’s sued the college for libel; tortious influence with business relationships and contracts, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, culminating in the nearly month-long trial in Elyria, Ohio.
“The students eventually pleaded guilty, but not before large protests and boycotts intended to destroy the bakery and defame the owners,” Mr. Jacobson said. “The jury appears to have accepted that Oberlin College facilitated the wrongful conduct against the bakery.”

Let the caterwauling about “chilling effecdts” begin.

More of this. Faster.

UPDATE: It’d seem Oberlin itself is doing its best to make sure more of this happens faster.

UPDATE 2: Oberlin costs $55K a year. Don’t you just love it when people with that kind of pedigree start yapping about other peoples’ “privilege”?

(Post title h/t Paul Havemann)

8 thoughts on “Now We Have A Precedent. Ho Ho Ho.

  1. I think Legal Insurrection is also reporting indications that Oberlin’s insurer won’t pay.

  2. These Oberlin folks are credentialed, not educated. The education is forthcoming whether they like it or not.

  3. UPDATE 2: Oberlin costs $55K a year. Don’t you just love it when people with that kind of pedigree start yapping about other peoples’ “privilege”?
    Same old, same old. This is not new. This is not progress. This is the privileged class assigning social rank based on their own interests. For a couple centuries they ranked poor whites over Blacks, now they rank Blacks over poor whites. It’s the damn bourgeois doing the same thing they have been doing for five centuries.

  4. Seems like they’re trying to compete with a lot of other schools in terms of being clueless about how their communities view them. The one thing I can say in their defense is that it is very interesting to contemplate the school being liable because they enable protests–that professors were letting kids out of class to protest Gibson’s. That noted, I think it’s a good precedent–kids were free to harass law-abiding businesses without fear of even a poor grade. Yes, it makes a difference.

  5. They are in such a bubble, especially in the universities, that they do not believe that their opposition can also mobilize to shut them down, get people fired or deplatformed, etc.
    I think the demonetizing of Crowder may have been slack tide. Things are starting to move the other way.

  6. I think they (SJWs & Co.) have finally reached a point where people are starting to fight back legally. Its kind of emblematic of what YouTube is doing now. They sent a algorithim out to censor “hate speech” and in the sweep its taking out people who are trying to educate people about what the Nazis did, in other words they are erasing history. Just like the Nazis did.

  7. One other thing, regarding Oberlin, that probably sealed the verdict was that Oberlin had a supposed “expert” claim that the bakery, which ships who knows how many thousands of dollars worth of product each year and supports four generations of its owning family plus employees, was worth no more than $35000. With that, any credibility their other testimony had vanished.

    Poor kid was just out of accounting school, which excuses his mistake somewhat, but even a new graduate ought to know that the value of a business is generally not less than the value of the building in which it’s housed. He was basically trying to argue that since business had dropped, along with profitability–due in great part to Oberlin cancelling contracts–that it wasn’t worth much. He ended up proving the bakery’s point as the bakery’s lawyer eviscerated him in court.

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