Oddly the same thing happened after another plague, that of the Black in London. Suddenly labor was scarce, and of course “management” tried to find ways to keep people in their old crappy underpaid jobs but abusing the law.
Remind me: how was Ascension compensated for not being able to provide the level of care that they expected to be able to provide on Monday, since they were missing 7 key employees?
More like there’s definitely a case here, but it’s such an absolute slam-dunk for one side for whatever reason that the judge will just issue a summary judgment without actually taking it to trial.
I see two things as materially different:
- The potential risk of additional harm to patients if the employees had been allowed to walk
- The potential harm to the business entity (ie, the hospital) had they lost their Trauma and Stroke certifications
What I still can’t see as different is what their response should have been in either case.
Quick analogy
I was a VP for a publicly-traded company. We had an employee stock purchase plan. At given times, employees could purchase X shares of the company’s stock at – let’s say – 85% of the current price.
I would often ask employees whether they were going to exercise that option (fully presuming that they would be).
I was amazed at how many told me that they were not. They didn’t have the money.
There were a number of times when I offered to lend the employee the money, explaining that – if they exercised the option – they could instantly turn $0.85 into $1.00 (>17.5% ROI in a matter of seconds).
I neither know nor care whether Theda could have afforded to match the competitor’s offer. They simply couldn’t afford not to.
I’m not sure how much more info I need in order to confirm that decision. They are a large enough entity that I can confidently say that they could have absorbed this … one way or another.
Too much was on the line for them not to.
I think of Theda Bara, whose nom-de-cinema was said to be an anagram of Arab Death.
But look at all of the analysis you had to do to get to that point. A judge has to make a split second decision. He may cast a wary eye at ThedaCare’s arguments, but they are alleging pretty serious harm. So, how about we all come in Monday and give your best evidence and I’ll decide then? Status quo remains. That seems eminently reasonable given what was stated, and after doing the analysis, with full participation from everyone, the judge seems to have arrived at the correct solution while compensating the employees. Win for the good guys. I don’t understand why posters are still complaining when, to me, this seems like how a judicial system should function.
Imagine if the judge had refused the injunction and one single patient died. I can see the headline, “Edna Smith, 82 year old church going widow dies from stroke after judge refuses to issue an injunction against corporate poacher Ascension.” And we would have had a similar thread about how health care needs to be government run because money is more important than lives under our current system and that the judge was probably on the board of Ascension and there needs to be an investigation.
I’ll ask again:
It took me longer to write it than to analyze it. And if you think the judge had to make a “split-second decision” , either you’ve never actually made a split second decision or you think “having” to make a split second decision includes doing so to start your weekend on time. Which in my opinion is probably what happened, but is absolutely not how I think a judicial system should function.
Okay, “split second” was incorrect, but put yourself in the judge’s position. You are being told that this company is deliberately poaching your employees and because of that you will lose accreditation and possibly harm patients. You are skeptical, just like I am (and what ultimately turned out to be true). But maybe you are overlooking something and you do want to hear the other side’s story. What is the real harm in waiting until Monday when you balance it against the horror story you are hearing? Increased pay, new jobs, freedom to contract, free market capitalism…all of those can be fixed in the days to come. An immediate loss of accreditation and/or harm to patients and the long term health care system in the community cannot be undone.
So the judge says you get one single weekend. I don’t think that the judge should be admonished for that.
I think Ascension prolly differs with you on that, since they suffered harm with no compensation.
Is this your understanding of how requests for injunctions are usually treated? If I request an injunction against you personally, and don’t put any actual evidentiary support in my pleading, but I allege a very serious harm, like let’s say I say I personally and everyone I know will probably die… are you going to expect a judge to say well what’s the harm, let’s come back next week?
Or are you very obviously, very very obviously and reasonably, going to want the judge to say you know, you don’t seem to have actually asserted a basis for me to use the power of the state to intervene here in this free flow of labor and enterprise?
This isn’t how injunctions are handed out. You don’t just get one because you asked for it, and because it will only be a few days. You are a conservative guy; you would absolutely lose your mind if a judge did this in a million other contexts.
Also the apparent remedy that ThedaCare needed for those couple of days is something they never got. The workers were not available to ThedaCare at any point during the TRO.
If the alleged harm could have occurred during the period they were given a TRO, it would have occurred.
But ThedaCare did put evidence in their pleading. It was misleading and “lying by telling the truth” as @doreen stated, and I fully expect them to be sanctioned for it by paying Ascension some cash. But they alleged both a cause of action and imminent harm. The system works because ThedaCare will end up paying more for this, both monetarily and reputationally, which makes frivolous TRO requests pretty rare.
They mislead about the merits of the case. They didn’t really mislead about the imminent harm that necessitated an injunction.
They weren’t asking for a TRO only for the weekend. They wanted it to remain in place while the litigation played out. If that didn’t happen, they claimed, they would be irreparably harmed because in the interim, their employees quit, they lose accreditation, patients suffer, etc.
Awhile ago, in several healthcare discussions, I pointed out that besides the current owners, the ones that would approve on how health care in America is run would be the medieval feudal lords. I was more correct than what I believed then.
Let us remind ourselves: the right outcome happened.
Right, and the judge said in effect, “let’s hear more about this the next business day” and then when that was done said, “sorry, no”.
I notice in many different incidents and issues, a certain tendency for people from different alignments, to complain “this shouldn’t even have made it that far!” Well, I am not the one running a courtroom, but courts seem to be all about process and going through the right motions, pun fully intended. So the judge said “come back Monday” and made the right ruling then, costing everyone one day’s lost income, plus lawyer’s fees. Yay. Take the win.
Correct, which demonstrates the fundamental illogic of the order.
The only way to actually prevent the alleged harm would have been to actively disrupt both Ascension and the new hires. And in the scenario that ended up happening, harm to them was small but it achieved no purpose.
And in the unlikely event that the judge found this week that the case had enough merit to warrant a longer injunction, he could have just instated it this week instead of last. Nothing that the judge ordered needed to happen immediately. It could have been ordered now.
I appreciate this explanation.
I didn’t say they didn’t. I said they offered no evidentiary support for enjoining the defendant, which they did not. Saying “these people told us they were going to quit on XYZ date” is evidence, even if falsified evidence, but it isn’t support for a legal remedy. Filing a brief and asking for a thing doesn’t mean you’ve demonstrated you should get it.
Like I said, I would be extremely surprised if this was your personal experience of how injunctive relief usually works, and extremely surprised if it also matched your personal philosophy in general of what it should take to get a court to, let’s say, interfere in the market. It’s very very easy for a court to say “you haven’t provided me with a good reason to do this.” They do it all the time.
Well, that’s the thing; the right outcome did not happen. Entertaining the argument at the initial hearing and actually granting relief was an outcome, and a very unusual and bad one. It’s better that it was subsequently corrected than if it had been compounded. But it’s still real bad that a court would offer any relief at all, because there was no real argument for relief.
A corporation walked through a courtroom door and said “these people are trying to quit, and that’s bad for our business. You gotta get involved.” And the court did not say “that is not how it works.” That’s not a good outcome. That’s a horrible model.
I’m kind of repeating myself here, I realize, but let’s analogize this to a different kind of civil dispute. I go to a court and I say that my ex-wife should be enjoined against going on a date with her new boyfriend. I file a brief and I say “yeah we’re actually still married, and also, if she goes on a date, a lot of bad shit is gonna happen, man. Floods, inflation, anarchy. It’s a pandemic. We gotta nip this in the bud.”
In that context, if the judge only grants a temporary injunction, and my ex-wife’s lawyers come in on Monday and prove that actually we are divorced, and I lied about that, it is still not a good outcome when the court declines to take any further action! It is still bad that the court thought there was any reasonable way forward with my case at all!