I’m sort of surprised that you are surprised by this. I mean, it isn’t a new thing or anything.
How does Canada deal with the punishment/deterrence aspect - say, if a corporation knowingly engages in potentially harmful behavior because doing so is to their economic advantage? Is there some system of administrative fines/penalties?
In the US, pro-business groups often lobby for restriction of punitives. But such arguments impress me as primarily reflecting capitalism, rather than any social good. Personally, I feel the more interesting question is why the punitives ought to go to the named party.
Yeah, it’s a fucked up system. But I’m interested in hearing how Canada’s system works better. How do you punish wrong doers if not through punitives?
Regulatory offences, with fines going to the public treasury, rather than a private civil action where the punishment amounts to a windfall to the plaintiff.
If it’s a matter of public concern, it’s handled by the public agencies. Civil matters are for private parties.
The U.S. system has large punitive damages because otherwise large organizations will simply accept compensatory awards as the cost of doing business and not otherwise try to improve their behaviors.
Supposedly, punitive damage awards are not common in Canada (as we’ve seen, they’re relatively rare in the U.S. too despite publicity given to notorious cases), but such awards have been given to Canadian private citizens. Example: the “insurer from hell” case, recently decided by the Canadian Supreme Court:
I suspect that an American couple similarly shafted by an insurance company would’ve received a larger punitive damage award from a U.S. jury.
Yes that’s Whiten v Pilot Insurance which @Spoons and I were mentioning, decided back in 2002. That and the Church of Scientology were the two most recent SCC cases I found.
I get where you Canadian guys are coming from and we weren’t that far apart in around the 1970s, but then we split (and I say this only for information) when the Democrats generally liked the expansion of punitive damage awards because they “punished” big business who “endangered the public to make money.”
Republicans pushed back and said that these new court decisions only “enriched plaintiff’s attorneys” and were the product of a “liberal Bar.”
Republicans seemed to have had a qualified win on that debate by scaling back the scope of punitive damages and by other laws limiting runaway recoveries. But our system is still well beyond what your system is and ours was prior to judicial activism.
IOW, if you were practicing in my state, with those comments, you would be told that you are in the “back pockets” of Big Business Interests who Don’t Care About the Little Guy.
You would make a wonderful member of the Republican Party if you would do so.
Seriously, though, that was (about 10 years ago) a big issue in many states. Tort Reform. And that was poo-pooed by the Dems, but it went about as far as Ohio did in this case, and the Dems complained about it because they wanted more punitives!
Your position would be solid right to hard right wing in this country regarding punitive damages.
From their trial courtroom, Assistant Dean of Students Antoinette Myers sent Raimondo a text message: “I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that store.”
I’m uncomfortable with making the institution as a whole pay for the misdeeds of individuals. If individuals who actually libeled Gibson Bakery had to personally fork up even a small amount of money, I think it would be far more effective, in preventing similar future libelous rushing to judgment, than taking money out of an endowment ($1.09 billion) that is bigger than a small college needs. I guess the administrators would evade this by taking out insurance, but I do wish it was possible to fine the miscreants.
As for what a college should do on the academic side, it should challenge student thinking rather than cater to it. I say that about Bible colleges as well as Oberlin.
As for town-gown conflict, when students are in the wrong, the college administration should side with the townies.
The university itself had several opportunities to stop their employees from attacking the bakery. What you propose would effectively make large organizations immune from lawsuits. “Oh, it’s not our fault. It’s just a few bad eggs here and there.” Oberlin made their bed and now they have to lay in it.
And not just stop some deans from acting up. The college suspended its contract with the bakery to provide baked goods to the dining halls. That doesn’t sound like a few “bad eggs”, but a conscious decision by the College to try to punish the bakery.
That story is rather favorable to Oberlin’s position - notably the description of two other students besides the shoplifter as having “intervened”, and leaving out the fact that all three convicted students admitted in court that bakery employees had not acted in a racist manner. From a separate account:
“According to a police report, Gibson told the (shoplifting) student he was contacting the police, and when Gibson pulled out his phone to take a photo of the student, the student slapped it away, striking Gibson’s face. The student ran out of the store. Gibson followed and then grabbed and held onto the shoplifter outside the store…Two other students, Cecelia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, friends of the shoplifter, joined the scuffle. When the police arrived, they witnessed Gibson lying on the ground with the three students punching and kicking him. The police report stated that Gibson sustained a swollen lip, several cuts, and other minor injuries. The police arrested the students, charging all three with assault and the shoplifter with robbery as well.”
I’m uncomfortable with large institutions failing to discipline or fire high-ranking administrators who act badly.
Definitely. The school had many opportunities to set this right but kept fighting the case for no rational reason. Apparently $25 million wasn’t enough to wake them up since the administration since appealed the ruling. I doubt losing the money intended for, but apparently wasted on education will have any effect either.
Oberlin College has agreed to pay over $36 million to the family-owned bakery the Ohio school falsely accused of being racist in a shoplifting incident.
