ELYRIA, OHIO (Legal Newsline) - The Lorain County pastry shop owners who were defamed as racists after stopping a black student from shoplifting will be paid $36.59 million now that the Ohio Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal filed by Oberlin College.
Gibson's Bakery sued in 2017 alleging that the historic university’s defamatory reaction to the arrest ruined its business.
“The incident happened on Nov. 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump was elected president and I've always been of the view that had it been some other day, the campus would not have reacted as immediately and vigorously as it did,” said William Jacobson, a professor of law at Cornell University who has been following the case since it began six years ago.
In the days following the arrest, white and black students rallied in front of the bakery to oppose alleged racial profiling with posters that stated ‘This runs deeper’ and ‘Black lives matter,’ according to media reports.
However, there was no evidence that the rate of shoplifting arrests at Gibson’s was disproportionately non-white, according to Jacobson.
“There was an Oberlin College culture of theft where students considered it their right to steal small things,” he said. “Students of every race and color stole. There was no racial aspect to it and students considered themselves entitled. The administration knew this was a problem. There are a bunch of small shops right near the college, including Gibson's Bakery, and they were just being swamped with shoplifting."
The problem was so bad that school officials asked Gibson's Bakery to call the school whenever a student was caught shoplifting instead of calling the police.
"What happened is the university did not want to crack down on student shoplifting," Jacobson told Legal Newsline. "So, I don't think this was a question of 'Let somebody go because he's black.' I think this was a question of no college student should be arrested for shoplifting because they considered it their right to do so."
Although Meredith Raimondo, Oberlin College dean of students and vice-president who allegedly passed out flyers labeling the bakery as racist was named a defendant, the jury award will be solely paid by the university.
“The college posted a bond so I assume they are not going to make her pay anything personally towards the ultimate judgment,” Jacobson said. “The big misconception here is that this was the college being held liable for student speech when in actuality it's the college being held liable for the actions of its officers, which is standard corporate liability.”
Raimondo has since left Oberlin College for Oglethorpe University in Georgia where she was hired as vice president for student affairs.
"You can understand why a jury would come back with big punitive damages because there was evidence of actual malicious intent of hatred of the bakery by senior college officials," Jacobson added.