A feel good story...

Justice! Oberlin college insurance company is refusing to pay for their settlement and trial charges in case against Gibson Bakery!

The Lexington policy does not provide coverage for “bodily injury” or “property damage” intentionally caused by defendants. While the Lexington policy potentially provides coverage in relation to “personal and advertising injury,” defined to include defamation and/or disparagement in certain circumstances, the Lexington policy excludes any such coverage if “personal and advertising injury” is caused “with the knowledge that the act would violate the rights of another … ,” or if the insured published material it knew to be false.

Well let's be perfectly clear here. The school knew damned well that the allegations waged against Gibson bakery were false. They never even really suggested that they had any evidence that Gibson bakery had any history of racist activities (as suggested by the boycott, protests, flyers, and such). In fact, their argument was largely two fold. That the suggestion of Gibson being a racist business was protected speech and that they were not responsible for what their students did.

Of course, they lost on both accounts. The court and jury found that calling a business racist, cancelling contracts, and openly attempting to undermine the business interests of Gibson bakery is not protected under the first amendment. It is the very definition of slander and libel. They also concluded that the school was involved as much as the student were. The flyer were printed on school paper and handed out by a school professor. Some professors provided time off or even school credit for the students participating in the protests.

Ironically, the school seemed hell bent on stringing this as long as they could hoping to use their financial advantage ($75 million in coverage) to overwhelm the smaller bakery with appeals and such. Apparently they believed that they had unlimited funds to do so because they would just bill the insurance company for it. But the insurance company appears (based on several opinions I have read) to be in the right here. Insurance has no obligation to pay for jury awards for things that their clients most assuredly did and did on purpose. The fact that Oberlin could have settled this years ago for a fraction of the cost is also part of the issue between Oberlin and the insurance company.

Make no mistake here. Had Oberlin believed that they were playing with their own money, perhaps things might have been different in how they did react to all of this. In fact, had they been playing with their own money, they may have not gotten involved at all with trying to destroy a business because that business did not cave to their demands regarding legal issue with their students. Keep in mind that Oberlin insisted that their students not be charged with crimes, but that these local businesses allow Oberlin to discipline their own. By policy, every student was given at least one free pass on any legal issue, meaning the theft and assault would have simply gone away. When Gibson Bakery chose to not drop the charges against the students, the attacks of racism started. Clearly Oberlin thought they owned the town. That is obviously no longer the case.