Regarding the Gibson bakery next to the Oberlin SJW college stuff from a over a month. The bakery stopped a couple of shoplifters and prosecuted them. They ultimately plead guilty. The college encouraged, and some professors participated in, protests of the racism of the bakery owners. This libel and slander resulted in great economic and reputational harm to the bakery and owners. They sued and won millions of dollars from the college. See also here.
I found this in my overloaded queue of things to blog about:
Here’s Oberlin’s litigation position, from its court filings: “Gibson bakery’s archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.” Get that? Whether the students accused of shoplifting had actually been shoplifting or not was irrelevant to whether it was fair to accuse the store of racism etc for detaining the students as shoplifters. The fault lay with the bakery owners for daring to actually stop and prosecute shoplifters!
Wow! The college lawyers actual said that. Not only is chasing and detaining shoplifters “archaic” but the guilt of the students is irrelevant. An ordinary person who would claim this in my presence would get a laugh and an immediate dismissal from me as having crap for brains. But a lawyer, supposedly trained to respect the law, claiming this is mind boggling.
What color is the sky in their universe? What sort of twisted world view thinks they can get away with this? These are the crazy years prophesized of by Heinlein. Either this is the end of times for rational thought or it is the wake up call for the adults to take charge.
Legal Insurrection has covered the trial from the start and has background info.
Oberlin – Gibson’s Bakery tag for all of the articles.
Both the Oberlin and their lawyers seem to be lacking any sense of fair-dealing or taking responsibility for their actions. One example: they asserted that Gibson’s Bakery was worth all of $35,000 — a business founded in 1885 that employed several people and provided 5 generations of Gibsons with a living. There are still 4 generations living with the oldest at 92 years old.
Mind boggling indeed.
I can remember making logical arguments like this when I was a kid and my mom corrected that mistake quickly and effectively. Needless to say, I did not get what I wanted or out of trouble and in fact, I often ended up in more trouble. Now I see similar things from my grandchildren and I take the time to help them understand the consistency that logic requires. To knowingly warp your mind to defend this kind of thinking would definitely take several years of consistent brainwashing which must now be the purpose of law school. That and to reinforce childish behavior.
The goal of the lawyer is to win the court case.
It’s quite possible the lawyers who wrote that know full well it was BS, but… If the judge buys it, they win. If the judge doesn’t buy it, no big loss unless the judge censures them strongly for such idiocy.
But then, what are the chances the judge would do that?
The Shakespeare Solution does start to sound more attractive some days, doesn’t it?
+1
Throw a lot of crap at the wall and see if anything sticks.
Become indignant! Remember the famed defense used in the movie Animal House.
the way I have always heard it.
“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”
And sadly the best light one can put is that the college is just pounding the table, but I think even just that is a very favorable light.
It wasn’t the judge they needed to buy that, but the jury – a jury of townies, because anyone who worked for or was currently taking classes at Oberlin would be automatically excluded from the jury. Townies who expressed the opinion during jury selection that the students were a bunch of thieves, and the college was encouraging them to loot the town, would also have been excluded, but those who were selected could and apparently did reach those conclusions from the evidence presented.
Evidence such as that 80% of the shoplifters apprehended by Gibson’s Bakery were Oberlin students, and 80% of them were white. And that the Dean of Students joined in the protest, helped direct it, and used college resources in aid of it, clearly implying that she thought theft and property destruction were OK.
Mencken must have been thinking of lawyers like this when he wrote:
“In nothing did the founders of this country so demonstrate their essential naivete than in attempting to constrain government from all its favorite abuses, and entrusting the enforcement of those protections to judges; that is to say, men who had been lawyers; that is to say, men professionally trained in finding plausible excuses for dishonest and dishonorable acts.”
“Dishonest and dishonorable”, indeed.