Oberlin College’s record on lawsuits is so bad that it hired a new role this school year – a dedicated risk manager.
The college most famously paid out $36.6 million to local Gibson’s Bakery after its administrators were found complicit in damaging and false accusations of racism against the town staple. The damaging accusations of racism came after a bakery employee chased several black individuals who stole alcohol in November 2016 out of the store.
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“Where’s the racism?”
This is the question that college presidents nationwide—and most everyone in their administrations—refuse to answer.
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Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, announced Thursday that it will pay a local bakery $36.59 million after a legal defamation battle.
The lawsuit began in 2016, when Allyn Gibson Jr. accused a black student of stealing a bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery, causing the college to launch a defamation campaign which included the vice president of the college calling the bakery racist. The Ohio Supreme Court declined the college’s appeal of a court’s previous judgment, causing the college to decide Thursday to pay the bakery.
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Ohio’s Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Gibson’s Bakery in its libel case against Oberlin College, declining to hear the school’s appeal and permitting the family-owned establishment to collect over $36 million in damages.
The litigation against Oberlin and Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo stemmed from uncorroborated accusations of racism that the Gibson family believes initially cost their store half its patronage. In June 2019, a Lorain County court ordered the school to pay the bakers $32 million. About $4.5 million in interest has accumulated since that ruling.
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On March 31, 2022, an Ohio Appeals Court upheld a lower court verdict against Oberlin College awarding $31.2 million to a local bakery on the grounds that, among other things, the College and its Dean of Students defamed the business.
There has been much reporting about the incident that sparked the lawsuit against Oberlin and the potential negative impact of the court’s decision on the rights of students to engage in free speech and protest.
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An appellate court this week upheld a lower court’s ruling that a local bakery was defamed by Oberlin College, a private liberal arts schools in Ohio.
In 2019, Oberlin was ordered to pay the maximum of $11 million in compensatory damages, $33 million in punitive damages, plus more than $6 million in attorneys fees to Gibson’s Bakery, a town staple that had served students at the school for generations, and even had a contract to sell some of its products to the school.
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Gibson’s Bakery filed a cross-appeal brief Monday after Oberlin College filed its appeals brief last week seeking to overturn a trial court’s decision which made the college pay the bakery $25 million in damages.
The damages relate to Oberlin College making defamatory statements about the bakery after three minority students plead guilty to shoplifting. After these three students plead guilty, Oberlin College students not involved in the case accused Gibson’s Bakery of racial profiling, held protests outside the bakery, and said the store had “a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.”
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Oberlin College is in the news again. Three years ago it was a racism charge by students, staff and faculty against a 100+ year old bakery. The business filed a defamation suit after losing half its income due to the accusations. Last week the anti-Zionist Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine erected a memorial on campus to honor the Palestinians who were killed by Israel in recent military strikes. More than a dozen of the Palestinians were Islamic Jihad terrorists.
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Dave Gibson, the owner of the bakery that won millions of dollars in a defamation lawsuit against Oberlin College, accused the school on Tuesday of waiting for him and his father to die.
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A judge has ordered Oberlin College to pay $6.5 million in attorney’s fees to the law firm that represented Gibson’s Bakery in its defamation suit against the school. That’s on top of the $25 million in compensatory and punitive damages the school must pay the owners of Gibson’s Bakery.…
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by Ethan Cai A Democrat judge nearly halved the damages awarded to a bakery that previously won a lawsuit against Oberlin College for defamation. After Oberlin College filed a motion on June 21 to cap damages given to the bakery, Judge John Miraldi, who ran as a Democrat in…
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A jury ordered Oberlin College to pay $33 million in punitive damages Thursday to Gibson’s Bakery, an on-campus business that the school falsely accused of racial profiling. As The Ohio Star reported last week, the Gibson family was awarded $11 million in compensatory damages. State law caps punitive damages…
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Oberlin College was ordered by a jury last week to pay $11 million in damages to a family bakery on campus that was falsely accused of racial profiling, but the monetary reward could triple during a punitive damages hearing scheduled for Tuesday. As The Ohio Star reported Sunday: The…
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A jury has ordered Oberlin College to pay $11 million in damages to a family bakery on its campus that was falsely accused of racial profiling and faced months of student protests. The bakery, called Gibson’s Bakery, has operated on campus since 1885 and had a business relationship with…
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