161–170 of 219 posts
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Yes, what could possibly go wrong giving private citizens the right to detain other private citizens https://www.nytimes.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georg...
The only reason police can detain people is because they are citizens. They don't have any special status that other Americans don't enjoy.
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yes, but they probably have a lot of losses from the past two years they can use to offset some of the taxes
This is such a strange reply. If the business is running at a loss (including legal fees) then yes that loss can be used to reduce the tax burden this year. But since the loss burden is 100% [1],and the tax burden say 50% this is worse, not better. Sure the 5 million accumulated loss means 2.5 million less tax, but it also means 5 million gone to cover the losses.. [1] losses are funded from somewhere, and those fund…
From the nytimes article, the judgment will be paid by Oberlin's insurance company, it will not come out of the endowment, they have not apologized, they are not accepting they were wrong, there have been no resignations. Meredith Raimondo, the Dean of Students at the time, who was passing out flyers and far more, nine months ago to accept a position as Vice President of Student Affairs at Oglethorpe University https…
> So what has Oberlin really learned? That their insurance premium will rise only marginally next year.
From the nytimes article, the judgment will be paid by Oberlin's insurance company, it will not come out of the endowment, they have not apologized, they are not accepting they were wrong, there have been no resignations. Meredith Raimondo, the Dean of Students at the time, who was passing out flyers and far more, nine months ago to accept a position as Vice President of Student Affairs at Oglethorpe University https…
There is no requirement that Oberlin learn anything here. The law pretty severely limits the extent to which civil damages can be used to teach lessons, as we just learned from the Alex Jones case: punitive damages are capped, constitutionally, at some low multiple of economic damages. It is an enormous defamation award, regardless of how you feel about where it leaves Oberlin.
Ohio (Oberlin) has a similar cap, but not necessarily the same protection for it. Missouri for example also had a cap, but it was held to violate the Missouri Constitution in 2014.
The Missouri case[1] came up last month post-Alex Jones, and its "separation of powers" argument is interesting. There's a professor at Georgetown who thinks a similar argument could succeed in Texas[2], but Texas at least tried to amend their Constitution to allow the cap[3].
1. https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=77893
2. https://twitter.com/HeidiLiFeldman/status/155561806384372121...
3. https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1555919948807028736, but the seven replies at https://twitter.com/HeidiLiFeldman/status/155594159820624691... find some flaws in the implementation
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Qualified Immunity would have a large word with you. If an Officer makes a wrongful arrest in the line of duty, Qualified Immunity will go a long way to shielding them, whereas a citizen without Qualified Immunity would be subject to wrongful arrest lawsuits and kidnapping charges.
This is an excellent argument for getting rid of qualified immunity, but not a very good argument against citizens' right to detain those they see committing crimes. I don't think there's much chance the cashier here grabbed the wrong person.
That’s false, for the reasons I’ve outlined. The courts have created a specific special legal status that applies to police, but not to ordinary people.
I am not all sympathetic to Oberlin, but this judgement is absurd. It is many many lifetimes of income for a small bakery. Even if they were forced into bankruptcy, this is beyond the pale. "The latest amount consists of about $5 million in compensatory damages, nearly $20 million in punitive damages, $6.5 million in attorney’s fees and almost $5 million in interest." This only contributes to our litigious society wh…
> The college said then that the bakery’s “archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests.” IIRC, the employee tried to take a photo of the shoplifter with his phone. The shoplifter took/smashed the phone or something. This makes it much more reasonable for the employee to try to stop the shoplifter from getting away. It wasn't like he tried to cuff the guy off the b…
Yep. From wikipedia: > On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, an underage African-American Oberlin College student and Student Assistant Treasurer,[9] Jonathan Aladin (aka Elijah Aladin), attempted to purchase a bottle of wine using a fake identification card.[8] The store clerk, Allyn D. Gibson, a son and grandson of the owners,[6] rejected the fake ID. Gibson noticed that the student was concealing two other bottles of wi…
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I can't find the link, but I read recently that FIRE came out against this verdict because they believe it infringes free speech. I agree the FIRE rankings are a good resource. But it's worth pointing out that FIRE opposes this verdict.
Whose free speech? This verdict doesn't have anything to do with the students protesting, does it? I thought it was based [almost?] entirely on the fact that the Dean of Students was handing out these ridiculous flyers.
> In its ruling, the Court of Appeals agreed that students had a right to protest. But the court said that the flier and a related student senate resolution — which said that the store had a history of racial profiling — were not constitutionally protected opinion.
So the fliers and the student senate resolution are not free speech.
> Carmen Twillie Ambar: archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. If you witness a crime you can arrest the criminal. It's basic civics. Something you might find about in an institution of higher learning. Don't know if they have one of those in Oberlin.
I'm still processing the $6.5 Million the lawyers made.