It takes a real dimwit to attempt to insult someone on a topic while fundamentally misunderstanding what the topic is about.
You can dodge the question if you want, but I will ask again, sans snark:
If you represent the kids or the camp, you can not think of a single strategy to research and resolve the matter?
If you are going to hold yourself out as an attorney, this is a fair question. Because while IANAL, I am quite certain there are attorneys in the jurisdiction who are quite capable of devising and acting on such a strategy.
I thought law school entailed a lot of discussing both sides of hypothetical cases, why the reluctance to try the other side’s point of view here? I assume you have done lots of it in your past, is that not correct to assume?
What resolution? The broken contract is a giveaway - the club will not litigate it. They will pay contract damages and be done with it.
If i’m representing the camp, I’m gearing up for a Civil Rights Act lawsuit based on the camper’s allegations of discrimination in the providing of a “public accomodation” Step one in representing the camp would be to ensure that the statements of my racist members are not used against me in court. That’s why you issue the “whatever they said, wasn’t being said for us” statement.
I’m not quite sure how demonstrating why a statement was made as being part of a litigation strategy (and not as a tacit acknowledgement that racist statements were made) requires me to analyze how the campers would act. If you can explain that to me, that’d be grand.
No, but I’m also not attempting to analyze or comment on the legality of anything. I merely observed that the new disclaimer on the club’s website is weasel worded in such a way as to avoid denying that members made racist comments about the kids. Since that disclaimer did not arise from a vaccuum, but in response to direct accusations from witnesses saying that members DID make racist comments, it doesn’t take a lawyer to understand that the attempt to distance rather than deny is a tacit admission. You know damn well it is. I don’t care whether it can be held to be an admission in a court of law. It’s pretty clear they don’t think they can outright deny the allegation, something they would have every incentive to do if they could.
Pop quiz, hotshot: what happens when the club’s counsel doesn’t preemptively inoculate any statements from being found to be an adoptive admission that may or may not have been made by someone who may or may not be found to be connected to the club?
Pop quiz number 2: how does counsel go about engaging in such inoculation?
Pop quiz number 3 (this one you should be able to answer): you know those DVD disclaimers that say “the comments expressed herein are not made by Warner Brothers” or whoever? Why do you think they’re put in there if all the director talks about was how awesome this shot was, and how awesome his movie is?
Answers:
#1: they run the risk of having those statements being found to be an admission by a party (edit: remove witness, add “or an adoptive admission”), and pretty damning evidence of racial discrimination
#2: you don’t go down to court and file a motion for a case that doesn’t exist. you say, publicly, “whatever that guy over there said or didn’t say, and I don’t even want to run the risk of slandering him by claiming he said anything, whatever that guy said or didn’t say is most definitely not a statement made in any official capacity of a party who is about to get dished with a lawsuit”
#3: its called abundance of caution.
Dude, you suck at writing quizzes. All the answers are right there in the post!
I was just going to add that, aside from the problem of adoptive admissions, it’s likely that the writer of the statement simply doesn’t know what was said, either way.
I wouldn’t be sure either if that was what I asked.
But it wasn’t.
For one thing, I said, you can dodge the question if you want, didn’t I?
For another, you suddenly held yourself out as a lawyer who is looking at this with trained eyes that the rest of us mere mortals don’t have. fine, if you say you are a lawyer, you are a lawyer.
You are a person too, and we can tell your personal preferences and interpretations.
But then you put on your legal hat, and I inferred from your comments not only how you would proceed, but more important that you were puffing up your chest as a negotiating stance and implying strongly that the other side has no case to be made.
Already, I think other attorneys upthread made similar but also opposing claims.
Since you stated that the matter of incorporation in the only thing that matters (or at least all you mentioned) I asked you the implication, you gave it. That was not news to me, hence the yawn. But what intrigues me is if you really believe what you seem to be puffing up your chest about while making an issue of how you are a lawyer and I am not.
So, I asked, if you were to represent the other side, what strategies are available to them?
That seems like a fair question to me, but like I said, you are free to dodge it. I think the answer could lead to a more enlightened, ignorance fighting discussion, and your last two posts were helpful in that regard so I am encouraged, but this thread is in the Pit, so who knows what you will choose to do - rant or fight ignorance ?
Time will tell I guess.
God, the stupid runs deep and wide within you. I like your use of the word “testimony” to describe what the kids said, as if it were something they said to a court under oath instead of to a reporter. Also, your insistence that only one side has any explaining to do is absolutely idiotic.
It’s unlikely the writer of the statements did not know what was said. The president of the club was present while the alleged comments were made, and was allegedly “embarrassed” by them. If the president had NOT heard the comments alleged, surely he would make sure his denial was known on the website.
What does the camp have to explain?
Mighty ironic that you take someone to task for using the word “testimony” in a non-court context when you are writing in the form of a plea to God.
Don’t knwo about the camp, but as for the club:
Aside from the racism claims, as an ongoing business, the pattern of breaching contracts with camps seems worth looking into if I am on the camp board.
Because, for some reason, other clubs don’t seem to have this problem with their business practices. Or if they do, they must be sweating bullets right about now 
I thought the point of pointing to the website statement was to provide corroboration for the newspaper account (e.g., look they’re not denying it so the newspaper account must be accurate). You cannot then support that contingent interpretation of the website statement by pointing to the newspaper account. It’s circular.
I’m not saying it isn’t plausible that they know some statements were made and therefore can’t deny them. But it ain’t exactly solid proof of the kind that those who disagree are being unreasonable.
ok, here we go:
Me: No, the translation of that is “members opinions are not the opinions or policy of the board”… you know, the entity that actually owns and operates the club? you know, the entity that would have to defend a lawsuit? i could bore you with why they need to say this, but it’s clear that your mind has been made up beforehand.
You: Nor are you. Member liability may not be so easily dismissed, if nothing else, it may depend on the equity structure of the club, and it seems it has been reported that the board reports to, or at least has been swayed in this matter by a group of members.
Me: The Valley Swim Club is a Pennsylvania not-for-profit corporation.
You: Meaning what exactly?
Me: It means that any members/owners/equity holders can’t be held personally liable for the actions of the corporation. The actions an owner takes as an individual person and as a representative of the organization are distinct. they need to parse those out and make it abundantly clear that those statements are not statements made in any capacity as an owner of the club. Otherwise the statement by camper X “i heard soccer mom x say to the manager that these black kids were scaring my white child” is admissible as non-hearsay evidence against the club in any discrimination suits.
You: You are saying, that if you were representing the clubs or the kids, you could not think of a single way to proceed because of the type of incorporation papers?
My response to the other poster was “no, this is how you actually would translate that statement”, you chimed in with some nonsense regarding member liability. i refuted this by pointing out that they are incorporated and as such the individual members would probably escape liability. then, way out from left field, you brought up this “…if you were representing… the kids, you could not think of a single way to proceed…” concept.
like i said, i have no idea where that came from. if you think that i was saying that the club itself would evade liability, well you just plain misread.
oh, i dunno, that they were wrongfully excluded solely on the basis of membership in a protected class?
No particular dog in this fight—I think it’s quite possible racism was a motivator in the incident, at least of the "what the hell, we just got invaded by a bunch of black kids!’ type of racism (although IMO, that any employee of the club literally said “we don’t allow minorities” is also entirely likely to be horseshit).
However, when I try to envision any sudden entrance of 65 hyped-up “minority” kids of that age into a pool area on a summer day that is NOT “loud and obnoxious,” all I can manage is a spit-take.
(Should someone produce a videotape of the little buggers filing in in silent formation like good little prep school students, I’ll officially recognize it as evidence of the supernatural.)
It was you who misread.
I asked for the outline of the case from the camp’s point of view.
I predicted the way this would go way upthread. As a manager I have been in these situtations where attorneys get called in. No I won’t win a law school citation battle with you, but that is not the issue here.
I said long ago this never sees a court room, it is settled behind the scenes.
All the current posturing by the club is of no note to me. It is pro forma. I know they will do it and why.
But the bigger picture is that the board has to worry about the future of the club. Even if they were to skate on a breach of contract case with damages already paid, they will still be under scrutiny, and in the next swim season after that, you can bet other minority camps will come a’calling, right?
So the board has to address that issue, not only with other camps, but as a pr matter and an internal matter with the expectations of members (who have other choices on where to swim and spend their money after all).
The issue is, ultimately the legal stuff is not the whole picture. The board needs to address issues maybe it honestly wasn’t aware of, and as I said earlier, this might even extend to non-racial issues and business practices regarding contracts.
All the rest of it - your side, the camp’s side, the Board’s side right now is posturing, but in the end, the Board is going to have to have a lot more minority members, probably in the form of camps like the one at issue, and the local members are going to have to get used to it or leave.
Or they could sell the land I suppose and walk away, suppose.
But in the end no matter what, this won’t see a courtroom, and while the club may or may not minimize monetary damages, it WILL have more minority members in the pool as a result. I don’t see how any lawyers can prevent that given the open admissions policy. This is not Augusta.
So, it would be nice if you would share with us the opposing legal strategy, that is what I asked, but it is not necessary, and in the end, I don’t see how any camp attorney can fix the situation so that the lack of minority members stands in the long term.
And that would probably be a just result, as I mentioned long ago.
What does the club have to explain? I think both sides are on equal footing. The camp says they were kicked out for bringing black kids, the club says they were kicked out for bringing lots of kids. There’s no reason to accept what the camp says as correct and then say that the club has some explaining to do.
Like I said, that is why we have a judicial system - to resolve disputes of this nature. We will have to wait and see.
I know it is the Pit and outrage is the style of the day, but anyone want to take a shot at the actual outcome of this matter, not the details of what happened so far?
It is lonely standing over here, being the only one willing to go into that deep end. But the water is great!
not_alice, the problem here is that you are stating some sort of legal outcome, whether it be the pool will have to be open to minorities (which, you should note, implies that they do not currently do so, and you have provided no citation that the club actually disallows minorities except for the news article), or that they will be forced to pay some large settlement, etc.
The problem is, regardless of your “experience” with these sorts of situations, your predictions and ideas on how these matters get sorted are simply completely, impossibly, and amazingly wrong. You have two basic choices: First, a breach of contract case. In which case there are minimal damages to be paid (a week worth of camp kids not swimming). There will be no investigations into “patterns of breach” or racist remarks because those do not matter at all in contract law. “Law school cite war” or not, this is a fact and means that your prediction cannot come to pass based on a contract theory. Nor will it matter in the future, because they can turn down who they want, and they can breach a contract any time they want without any sort of penalties above and beyond actual damages, which will be small. Period.
So, your other option is to sue them under a constitutional claim for a civil rights violation. Indeed, you could dig up some stuff and interview members and depose the management and make a showing that the club is racist. However, you will first have to survivie a motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment to clear the hurdle of proving that the club is not a private club. Your amateur analysis notwithstanding, the fact that the club allows the public to purchase memberships means nothing. There are several factors, already posted, and there are hundreds of court cases dealing with each prong of the pc/pa distinction.
It is in no way a slam sunk that this club is going to be found not to be a private club. Your layman’s experience and a little bit of web research aren’t enough to tell one way or the other. Just by reading some of your posts, it is clear to me that you are operating on an interpretation of constitutional law not found anywhere in jurisprudence, but only one found in your ideals (however noble).
So the way I see it, your predictions are completely wrong, and all you are doing in this thread now is trying to make some sort of case as to why your uneducated and ignorant intuitions are going to carry the day in court, should it ever come to that. There may or may not have been racism, but the constitution also protects those you disagree with, and racism does not, and never has, been the kind of thing that allows one side to simply declare a win and move on.