Even so, the amount paid would have told them how many kids were coming, and if these bookings can be done online, you’d think they’d program the site to know the pool’s own capacity and safeguard against overbooking.
It is not credible that theye were surprised by the numbers. They knew how many people they had booked by virtue of knowing how many admissions had been paid.
I can’t afford a dictionary, and my employer is too niggardly to provide one at my desk.
While we’re all jumping to conclusions, ever consider that the club never planned on having this many kids per accompanying adult? Losts of pools have a “no minor unless accompanied by an adult” rule. If the camp signed up online for 60 memberships, it’s possible that the club didn’t realize what it had coming.
Having worked as both a lifeguard and counselor at both sleepover and day camps with plenty of inner city kids, I can tell you that many of them are poor swimmers, if they can swim at all, which taxes lifegaurds, especially when there is not a high ratio of other adults.
It’s quite possible that this swim club didn’t realize it was being turned into a summer camp pool.
to add to this, it’s quite possible the club would have had the same reaction had the entire all-white football team from a local school showed up, or an all-white youth group from a church, or the junior Klan wanting to kool off.
I looked up the application form for the club. There are only a few spaces on the form for children, where names are given - certainly not 60. I think someone would notice if they got 20 of these things all together.
Also, though it is a private rather than municipally owned club, it looks like membership is pretty much pro forma. I doubt that this level of privacy is going to be much of a defense against a discrimination suit. Last time I was in Salt Lake City you had to become a member of a bar to drink there - I doubt very much this type of membership could be used to exclude anyone.
That’s not possible at all. They already knew they had booked a summer camp, and they knew how many there would be. Their computer at least had to know.
Born and raised Philly guy here. Live in the Philly area. Work in the Philly area.
I need to throw some perspective at you. As late as the 1990’s (and maybe until this day), some black families that moved into white neighborhoods were given 24-hour police surveillance after riots, picketing, vandalism and threats. Essentially, for most of my teen years and into my 20’s, more than one black family in my until-then all-white neighborhood had full-time Philadelphia police body guards. They stayed in the front of the house in police cruisers.
Racism runs deep in Philly. If you are white, and you live/work here, everyone assumes you hate black people and you will hear all their personal views about >insert every derogatory name for black people here<. Daily. Come home from work? Curse the >insert derogatory name< Stuck in traffic? Curse them. At a birthday party? Curse them over coffee.
It is bad. Very bad. It’s hard to explain to people who didn’t grow up in the neighborhoods and who don’t have a vast network of local citizens.
You’re assuming it was booked through computer. I doubt it. My private health club in SF allows a bunch of poor kids to the club on certain days. It’s a form of neighborly charity (bot that the kids live near the club). And there is no money involved. But they also bring the kids in when they know the club is very slow. And let members know ahead of time. My guess is that whoever set this up just didn’t take into account the effect of adding 60 kids to a pool that was probably already comfortable occupied. That and the fact that a lot of these kids get really excited having such a fun, novel experience, that the “complexion” of the pool got considerably more rowdy.
Thank you for your *qualified * input. It’s amazing that things are still this way in major cities of America. We still have a long way to go but to credit Americans… I never thought we’d come this far in my lifetime.
We’re getting there and I’m optimistic. 
The rule is damages that are reasonably foreseeable to the parties contracting. In your hypothetical, the damages would be the amount of the grant, only because you explained to the courier the consequences of a breach.
Congrats on remembering that old chestnut Hadley v Baxendale. Are you a paralegal yourself?
Of course, I am pretty sure that the foreseeable damages in this swimming pool case would not be very high. Certainly there won’t be tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for a breach of contract claim, regardless of the claims by participants in this thread. It’s a swimming pool, for chrissakes, there’s no damages for mental anguish or some outrageous opportunity cost damages, and certainly not punitive damages.
Were you blocked out of Aspie Chat again? I never suggested that they could get zillions of dollars for consequentials, only that if posters were suggesting that return of the fee meant there was no possibility of any other damages awards, this was mistaken. As to punitives, I never even addressed those (because it is exceptionally difficult to get them in contract actions), so your remonstrance on that point is a bit of a strawman.
I know the concept of “conversational asides” is difficult when your social development is stunted to the level of a four year old’s, but do please try not to get butt-hurt about it. We’re all very impressed that you identified the case, the fact that Richard Parker did so several posts ago notwithstanding.
The article said the club refunded $1900 dollars. At the above mentioned $30 per kid, they should’ve known how many kids they were getting. I also think it’s as ridiculous to assume that a summer camp didn’t call ahead to make arrangements at a pool and instead just up’n showed up with sixty kids as it is to assume that this pool didn’t pay attention to their scheduled reservations, cashed out the payment for $1900 dollars, and was surprised to see sixty kids showing up.
Just what I learned from reading the recent Stoid threads 
J/K.
No, IANAL. and I do learn from lawyerly discussions like this here and elsewhere, so thanks for your feedback and sharing so far.
I do however have a management background, sufficient to gauge the likely risk/reward aspect of a case like this.
I predict it will go like this:
1 - Some local lawyer will see a payday and take it on contingency. This has probably already happened, or is about to real soon now.
2 - Lily white club has decision to make: fight what may be a simple breach of contact claim like you say in open court, inviting close scrutiny of the club, its finances, its management and membership, and thier public and possibly private behavior for an extended time in the press, and in court and depositions. Or settle quickly and quietly.
3 - Said members are probably upper middle class or high class professionals and their families who are not going to be keen having the press poke around and get their names involved in racist accusations." Oh yeah, before we hire that guy we found on linkedin, let’s google his name one more time. Oh." No one wants that, but it is a foreseeable outcome of an extended fight.
4 - Members say to management to settle. Management looks to settle.
5 - Lawyer working on contingency smells blood. Eyes spin like a one armed bandit. They stop in the mid 6 figure range, or even low 7 figures if there is evidence that this is ongoing and planned - and those pictures up there now sure don’t look good for the club in this regard. There will be other evidence suggesting that the club is less than accommodating too. The lawyer will make sure of that. No one seriously doubts it is true, and do you really want to argue about how few non-white members you have ever had in open court counselor? I thought not.
6 - Club, under orders to settle enters negotiations. Maybe they can’t really afford cash up front in the range of 50% of the initial offer where it might land, but they can offer a partnership with the camp so all their kids get a fair chance forever more every year, some stake in the net/gross revenue of the club, some cash for the camp, and cash to pay the legal bills. All in exchange for no admission of wrongdoing and confidentiality of terms of course.
7 - I’ll draw it up counselor.
My brother and my mother lived many years in Philadelphia, in the areas around Center City, and now that I think about it, my brother lived a while in soe NE neighborhood, not sure where. OK, I know that is mostly not the neighborhoods you mean, but they got around, I will ask them about this. I don’t recall ever hearing about it when I visited, or when my good friends moved from Baltimore where I lived (which is not much better than you describe, so I believe you could be right) to the neighborhoods of Philly.
Which is what I said earlier, and then the solution is to get more lifeguards in a hurry, and make the kids have fun in other activities in the meantime. I bet the lifeguards are HS sophomores too, not really trained for crowd control even if they can fish you out of the water with the best of them.
Wow. not_alice’s prediction of what will happen in court is breathtaking. Not least for the idea that a breach of contract case will run up a bunch of discovery on club assets and the like. Fishing expedition much? Sorry, not allowed. Too bad you have to allege a complaint in your, well, complaint, and can’t just poke around till you find something. (Hint: even supposedly racist rich people get lawyers!)
Your prediction would go down really well… in Hollywood. Maybe you can get Skeet Ulrich to play the plucky borderline alcoholic lawyer who takes the case, and maybe Sam Jackson can make a little speech about muthafuckin kids in a pool. Gene Hackman can play the rich club president! It’ll be a timeless tale of David v Goliath and make the masses feel good when the plucky camp kids (including the overly-precocious streetwise aspiring rapper who learns to love math) triumph over the fat forces of whiteness. I smell an Oscar!
(Sadly, in the real world it’s a non-starter and not the kind of thing that’s going to bankrupt the evil club.)
bolding mine.
I read this as the “concern” was not so much from the club’s management but its general membership who weren’t happy about letting this day camp of 60-some kids into the pool.
And yes, race and socio-economic backgrounds were definitely a factor.
So management’s knee-jerk reaction to is kick them out and refund their money to appease their members, board committee, benefactors, etc…
It reeks of class-ism and racism but apparently as a private club, they can exclude anyone they want.
What others have said: it’s hard to see what distinguishes this sort of ‘membership’ from a business offering a standard rate to a customer off the street. IANAL, but I doubt there’s much of a legal distinction.
JMHO that if the day camp takes the swim club to court, the swim club goes down the tubes. just as if they were a pizza joint that decided they didn’t want to serve a bunch of black kids.
I read the article. If by saying “ZOMG illegal!! ZOMG!!” any of those posters meant “I would bet that there is a pretty good case that the swimming pool is a public accomodation and not a private club and therefore the discrimination was illegal under Heart of Atlanta and its progeny,” then I take back my rant. But I highly doubt they thought that. I’m fairly certain many people think that discrimination by a private club that is truly a private club is or should be illegal.
Why do you always do this? You post a story and then fight tooth and nail to make others see it from the perspective that allows the most liberal douche outrage-on-others’-behalf as possible. Why can’t you just acknowledge that people see things different ways and there may be two sides to it?
To be clear, I’m not complaining about the OP, I’m just complaining about your dogged insistence that something amiss must have been going on. The world is rarely as black and white as that.