Jury Awards Gibson's Bakery $11M Against Oberlin College
legalinsurrection.comA potentially explosive case in which protests/boycotts by college students/administrators based on claims of alleged racial profiling by a local business appear to have backfired in a big way - at least in the first big legal phase.
There is a ton of background at that link, but can you help me understand what portion of the protests and/or severing of business contracts was damaging and/or considered tortuous interference? With no opinion on either of the plaintiffs (I hadn't heard of the case), it's not immediately clear to me what happened that wasn't organized protest in a public space (which, presumably, would have been legally fine).
This site has followed the case closely and goes through a lot of the evidence in the linked items. In general, the defendants appeared to go over a line by asserting that the arrest of a shoplifter was based on racial profiling when there was utterly no evidence that the bakery had profiled anybody and when the evidence appeared open-and-shut that shoplifting had occurred (as the guilty pleas eventually confirmed). The other potentially inflammatory element is the huge impact the protests/boycott had on the bakery, essentially almost destroying its business. When you put it all together, it becomes a hard case to defend and the verdict reflects that. At the same time, this is a preliminary report on the verdict and I am sure more details/analysis will follow.