The Daily Signal - Oberlin College Eats Just Desserts for Smearing Bakery

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Back in 2016, clerks at Gibson’s Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio, stopped a group of black shoplifters from stealing from their store. What they didn’t realize was that act would set them on a six year legal battle. The tiny, family owned bakery was accused of racial profiling for stopping the shoplifters. That accusation caused students and faculty from nearby Oberlin College to engage in a smear campaign to get them shut down. A libel case filed by the owners of the bakery recently concluded, with the bakery owners emerging victorious. This hasn’t stopped the school from continuing to accuse the shop of being racist. “They have been completely unapologetic. They have been very aggressive towards this bakery,” says Bill Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor and founder of Legal Insurrection. “They continue to make their false accusations of racism against the bakery, they show no remorse whatsoever.” Jacobson and Legal Insurrection have been covering this case since the very beginning. He joins the show to give a background on the case, as well as discuss what the verdict means for other woke schools targeting small businesses. We also cover these stories: President Biden says the most “extreme political organization that’s existed in recent American history” is the “MAGA crowd.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. wants to stop tax breaks for companies who cover travel costs for their employees to have an abortion. The computer repair shop owner who exposed Hunter Biden’s laptop has filed a defamation suit against Congressman Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, as well as CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale. With 50% off Ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past. And with their latest update, they'll discover their family origins like never before. With even more precise regions and new and exclusive features. Their best gift, our lowest price. 50% off Ancestry DNA, only until December 2nd. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply.

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, May 5th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. Back in 2016, clerks at Gibson's Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio, stopped a group of black shoplifters from stealing from their store. What they didn't realize is that act was going to set them on a six-year legal battle. Bill Jacobson, a Cornell law professor and founder of legal insurrection, joins the show today to give us a background on the libel case that just concluded and discuss whether the verdict of that case means something.

for woke schools who are going to target small businesses. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Bill Jacobson, let's hit our top news stories of the day. President Biden says the most extreme political organization that's existed in recent American history is the MAGA crowd, referring to former President Trump's slogan, Make America Great Again. Biden made those statements on Wednesday,

following remarks on the federal deficit. When a reporter asked the president his thoughts on the leaked draft opinion on Roe v. Wade, Biden had this to say via Bloomberg. What happens if you have state changes the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can't be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written? What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this megacrowd is really the most extreme political organization that's existed in American history. in recent American history.

Earlier in his remarks, Biden derisively referred to a plan by Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida as extreme. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the United States Senator, who's leading the Republican National Senatorial Campaign Committee, released what he calls the ultra-maga agenda. It's a mega-agenda, all right? Let me tell you about this ultra-maga agenda. It's extreme, as most mega things are. Senator Scott responded to Biden on Fox News. I had the opportunity to listen to what the president said.

First off, almost every sentence was a complete lie. First off, let's think about what he did. He never talked about inflation. You know, since he's been in office, inflation is 8.5%. We just had a negative GDP down 1.4%. So you see people that are struggling all across this country. Now, with regard to there's a complete difference between my view of the world and his view of the world. I'm the biggest tax cutter probably in the center right.

now or even up here. I cut taxes a hundred times. A growing number of companies are announcing that they will cover travel costs for their employees to have an abortion. Now, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio wants to stop those companies tax breaks. Businesses like Uber, Amazon, Lyft, Disney, and Yelp have announced that they will cover expenses related to both gender transition procedures and abortion costs. So Rubio has introduced a a new bill called No Tax Breaks for Radical Corporate Activism Act. If passed, it would amend the tax code which currently allows companies to deduct the cost of some employee benefits.

Rubio says our tax code should be pro-family and promote a culture of life. Instead, too often our corporations find loopholes to subsidize the murder of unborn babies or horrific medical treatments on kids. my bill would make sure this does not happen. The computer repair shop owner who exposed Hunter Biden's laptop has filed a defamation suit against Congressman Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, as well as CNN, The Daily Beast, and Politico. John Paul McIsaac filed the suit on Tuesday and says that Schiff and the news outlets

falsely accused him of spreading Russian disinformation by revealing the laptop, which caused him to face harassment and lose business. In a statement to the New York Post, McIsaac said, After fighting to reveal the truth, all I want now is for the rest of the country to know that there was a collective and orchestrated effort by social and mainstream media to block a real story with real consequences for the nation. McIsaac continued, this was collusion led by 51 former pillars in the intelligence community and backed by words and actions of a politically motivated DOJ and FBI. I want this lawsuit to reveal that collusion. and more importantly, who gave the marching orders? Amongst those 51 intelligence officers were former CIA directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Michael Hayden,

as well as former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who the New York Post reported called the laptop Russian disinformation. The New York Post reached out to Schiff, CNN, The Daily Beast, and Politico, but did not immediately receive a response. The Daily Signal has been covering the scene at the Supreme Court since that draft majority opinion, in the Dobbs case was leaked on Monday night. Pro-life and pro-toist protesters have been outside the Supreme Court all week practicing their First Amendment right.

And among those protesters is a small contingency of self-described progressive pro-lifers. These are young people who are feminist, Democrats, and support many of the policies on the left, but they are staunchly pro-life. On Tuesday evening, there were thousands of pro-abortion. protesting outside the Supreme Court. And in the middle of that crowd, we're about 15 of these pro-life progressives. I spoke with one of the young women

leading the group named Kristen. I'm here because I'm sick and tired of violence being committed under the name of progressivism. As a progressive, as a feminist, as an atheist, I find absolutely appalling. And I just think that it's time that, you know, we support pregnant people in their communities and don't, you know, have them need to resort

to this type of situation. and I don't think that it's equality to say that I can only be equal if I have access to violently oppress another human being. Kristen and her group of leftist pro-lifers were shouted down by the thousands of pro-abortioners in the crowd of the Supreme Court to the point that police escorted the small group to the side of the court and surrounded them for their own protection. The message Kristen told me that she wants pro-abortionists to hear is follow the science. The biological consensus on when a biological human life begins is clear.

It's time to follow the science, follow the right to life, and stop violently oppressing people. Make sure that you are following the daily signal on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. So you can stay up to date on all of the reporting that we are doing on Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs case decision. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Bill Jacobson, as we discuss the defamation case, out of Oberlin College. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics. But here's something I've come to understand.

When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work, individual responsibility, strong local communities, and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show,

is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you. And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show, wherever you get your podcast. My guest today is Bill Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor as well as founder of legal insurrection.

Bill, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. I wanted to have you on today to discuss this story that's been going on for a very, very long time that hopefully had a pretty positive conclusion. But this is about the bakery and Oberlin College in Ohio. You've been following this story since 2019. So let's set things up for our listeners. Can you briefly expand upon the background of this story? Sure.

The events took place the day after Election Day, 2016. And that's important because the Oberlin College campus was in meltdown because Trump had won. And what happened was that Gibson's Bakery and Mart, so it's a bakery, but it's also kind of a mini-mart, if you want to call it that, that service is mostly the college. stopped a black student from Oberlin for shoplifting. And the person was shoplifting, had a bottle of wine tucked in his jacket and a few other things. And a scuffle ensued. And he was arrested, as well as two of fellow students from Oberlin, both of whom were black, who were also shoplifting and they were, in fact, assaulting the clerk when the police arrived. So this was a case of shoplifting.

at shoplifting in the town of Oberlin had been a persistent problem. There was what was called a culture of shoplifting among the college students. So they were very alerted to shoplifting problems. And what should have been a routine shoplifting stop and arrest erupted on campus with accusations of racial profiling and accusations and protests, very vigorous protests outside. But what made this different is the college joined in. It wasn't just students. It was college administrators outside leading the protests, including the dean of students, who ended up being a named defendant in the case,

passing out flyers, accusing the bakery of having assaulted the students and having a long history of racial profiling, as well as other accusations. But it was the accusation of racial profiling and the accusation of assault. that would ultimately give rights to a libel case. And what happened after that, and we started covering it actually about a week after the incident. So we've been covering this almost since day one in 2016. And what happened after that is the college cut them off

from their contract with the food service company. The bakery provided baked goods to the students through an intermediary food service company. They were kicked out of that. College basically announced a boycott of the bakery, denounced the bakery, And essentially the entire college community turned on this bakery with accusations of racism. And that's how it all started.

Now, that libel trial just ended. I believe it ended positively for the Gibson's. They won $32 million in damages. Did the jury or did the judge involved in the trial see this as a relatively clear example of the college overstepping its bounds? Well, they didn't file suit for a year. so they filed suit in 2017, took two years to get to trial. So the trial started in May of 2019. We were the only national outlet to have a reporter in the courtroom reporting every single day of the trial. And so when the verdict came down, it was an $11 million compensatory verdict.

And it was based on libel and defamation claims and tortious interference with their contract with the food service company. intentional infliction of emotional distress. And so the compensatory verdict cumulatively, there were three plaintiffs, two individual Gibson's plus the bakery. Cumulatively was $11 million. They then had a separate trial later in June of 2019 for punitive damages. The trial was bifurcated at the request of the college. So the Gibson's didn't get to put into evidence or the really nasty evidence until the punitive trial, and that came back with a $33 million punitive verdict, that ended up being knocked down under Ohio tort reform. So the end result was a verdict for $25 million plus $6 million in attorney's fees. So the judgment was $32 million. It then spent almost the next two years in the

appeals court. And the appeals court just recently, and that's what's been in the headline less than a month ago, the appeals court upheld the verdict. And so that is, and it was based on standard law and standard evaluation of what constitutes defamation and libel. So, for example, calling somebody a racist is not defamatory. That's an opinion. But saying we have engaged in racial profiling, that's a statement of fact. Racial profiling is a fact. And tortious interference, etc. So it's been upheld so far with interest. The college back in 2019 had to post a $36 million appeal bond to secure the interest that's been running. Interest has been running at about 5%. I may be a little bit off on my math, but I think it's been running about $4,000 a day since June of 2019.

So they're owed now right about $36 million. And the case, there's one last chance for Oberlin College to try to reverse it, which is to try to get the Ohio Supreme Court to hear the case. And that is not a given. You don't have a right to have the Ohio Supreme Court hear the case. It's very similar to the U.S. Supreme Court. They only take a small percentage of the cases that people want to have heard by them. Whether they will take it or not, we don't know, because those papers haven't been filed yet. I just checked this morning. There's nothing in the docket that indicates they filed to go to the Ohio Supreme Court, but we expect that they will. In light of that, it doesn't really seem like the school believes

they've done anything wrong. They haven't expressed remorse over what happened. No, and that's the truly astounding thing. And I think the jury saw that. We were getting reports. We were the only one really reporting every single day what was going on. And it was quite astounding. Throughout the case, They have been completely unapologetic. They have been very aggressive towards this bakery. They continue to make their false accusations of racism against the bakery. They show no remorse whatsoever. And I think that came across to the jury in their attitudes on the witness stand.

It really is astounding. One of the things that came out during the testimony by David Gibson, who was essentially the person who ran the bakery. He's now deceased. He saw the verdict, but he did. didn't see the appeal. He didn't live long enough. And so what he testified is that before they filed a lawsuit, he went and had a meeting with the college officials. And he said to them, look, I won't file a lawsuit if you would just publicly issue a statement retracting the accusations

of racism. You don't even need to apologize. You just need to say we are not racist. You know, we want to get our reputation back in this town. And they wouldn't do it. They would not do it. The result is several years of litigation, a lot of bad publicity, currently $36 million and still running, unless they get it reversed by the Ohio Supreme Court. So this really is an example of people who have power and feel they have power over everybody in that town. And how dare this little bakery stand up to them. They expected the bakery to take a knee, so to speak, expected the bakery to bend the knee. And grovel, please, you know, we're sorry, we're sorry. But there was nothing to be sorry about.

The evidence was clear. And they pleaded guilty. So they stopped people who were actually shoplifting. Nonetheless, the college over multiple administrations has been extraordinarily aggressive towards this little bakery. Do we have any insight onto whether this is a widely shared opinion about the bakery? Do we know if the student body believes that the bakery is racist? if there are teachers on the campus that believe that this bakery is racist?

Well, the evidence was that there were a lot of, obviously, protest people holding signs accusing them of being racist. There's no history of it. There's no history of problems with the bakery until this. But subsequent to it, the bakery's business is way down. Students and faculty and the administration still don't shop at the bakery. And you can imagine being in a small college town where the college dominates everything. If you're a bakery in a town and no one in the college community will deal with you, that destroys your business.

So I don't know the intimate details of their finances, but what's been publicly reported is they are struggling. They are really struggling because while the town people still support them and still shop there, they've been cut off from the biggest entity in town, which is Oberlin College. One of the things that does strike me about this case, and you sort of brought this up earlier, is that instead of just, radical students going in and saying, oh, this is racist and you have to stop. It was the administrators in the school itself that really went hardcore on this. And it's kind of been the primary driver of this case. Why do you think that Oberlin was so aggressive in trying to get this bakery shut down? You know, I've covered Oberlin College for my website going back long before this case. You know, you know at the Daily Signal, you're always looking for content. You know, the beast must be fed.

You must have you used to be so great. And Overland College just fed us a lot of material over the years. There was the, you know, the protests, you know, over the dining hall serving supposedly culturally appropriated, you know, Asian food. There was the hoax of, you know, racist hoax on campus where two white liberal students spread flyers, nasty, very nasty flyers and posters. and the campus erupted in controversy, and it turned out that when they got caught, they just said, oh, well, we were just trying to spark a conversation about race. So it just has this long history of problems. And so we always, we followed it.

And so when I saw this little bakery protests, you know, we followed it. The problem with Oberlin College is the problem with a lot of college administrators and administrations. They are extremely weak. They cannot stand up to the students. They are scared to death of the students. Not long before this, the students had issued a 14-page ultimatum to the university, which they did reject, but some pretty outrageous things in there, including firing certain professors,

promoting to tenure certain professors that they liked, certain black professors that they wanted, promoted immediately to tenure, all sorts of demands. And so this is an administration, that whether they did it consciously or subconsciously, I think we're afraid that student anger the day after Trump won would be directed towards the administration. And so I think this was a redirection of student anger towards this shiny object, Gibson's Bakery, as opposed to having it turned towards the administration,

because there'd been a lot of student protests versus the administration as well. So I think it's a combination of weakness, a combination of some in the administration were true, believers in this sort of activism, and they're scared to death of the students. I think it's just a bad combination, and unfortunately it's a combination we see on a lot of college campuses even today. One of the members of the administration who is sort of central to this story is a woman named Meredith Reimondo, who, it seems to me from the reporting, was the ringleader, really, of this campaign against the bakery. She's landed on her feet at another college over in Georgia, but did she face any consequences at all for kind of instigating this, this campaign against the bakery?

Not that I can see. Nobody did. And that's the amazing thing in academia people tend to fail up. So the president at the time of this incident and for the year or two after, who's not the president now, actually got a job at a bigger university. So he's now president of a big university. I think it's Pace University. I might be wrong on that in New York City. So he oversaw this complete debacle. And what happens? He gets a better job someplace else, Meredith Romondo. I don't know if the job she has now is better, but it's equivalent. So she suffered no consequences whatsoever.

The general counsel of Oberlin College who oversaw this legal strategy and whose communications almost became an issue in the punitive damage case because she, after the $11 million compensatory, quite unbelievably, she sent an email blast to the entire college community, criticizing the jury. I mean, who does that when the jury now has to decide on punitive damages? Now, the jury never got really to hear about that letter. The plaintiffs tried to, but a complete, botched strategy. She is now general counsel at a larger university. As far as I can tell, nobody has suffered a single consequence at Oberlin College because of this. I think one of the things that just really strikes me about this story is the fact that the school just lied.

It seems like there's really no way to get around that point that if the actual culprits of the shoplifting confessed to doing it, and they still continued to argue that it was racially biased, it was racial profiling, how often do we see that universities will just do that? They will just lie to take down their opponents. They may not consider it a lie. They probably think there was. racial profiling here, and the Gibson's just got lucky, so to speak, that it turned out the person was shoplifting, but why did you target this person? And the Gibson's would say, well, we targeted it because we saw something bulging out of his jacket. And in fact, if you go over the police reports, and again, the Gibson's, I think the testimony was, they suffered about $10,000 a year in losses due to shoplifting. And all the stores in downtown, the students just felt it was their right to steal from stores. And so, there are a fair number of statistics on this which show who the Gibson's had called over the years, called the police on for shoplifting. And the statistics, and they've done it quite frequently. And the statistics show that the demographic of who they called the police on matches very closely the demographic of the town. So there's no evidence there that they disproportionately called the police for shoplifting on black students or students or anybody else.

So, no, there's nothing there, but those accusations are so easy for them to make, the accusation of racism, it's become a weapon. I don't think they even really think about it anymore. It's a way to silence somebody and to put somebody back on their heels and on the defensive. So whether Gipson's, I mean, Oberlin did it intentionally or not, wasn't actually relevant because the Gipsons were held to be private citizens. So all they had to show was negligence. They didn't have to show, you know, knowledge of the falsity of it or, you know, and so, but I think that the college just assumes white business owner, black students stopped. It must be racism. I mean, that's what our society is in their view.

So I don't know if they consciously thought they were lying, but they certainly disregarded the facts. You've mentioned a little bit about how Gibson's bakery was very negatively affected by this, even to today. that their business is not doing as well as it used to. Is there anything that they could have done to maybe mitigate the damage from this type of attack, or was it literally just a matter of the school says one thing, and that's really all that matters? I think what may or may not have helped them is if they had groveled. Okay. If they had confessed to their sins, if they had admitted everything, perhaps the college would have been more lenient on them.

We don't know that because we can't undo what happened in undue history. But I think that's probably the only way because the college community was so against them that you had a choice to either beg for forgiveness, which they wouldn't do because they didn't think they did anything wrong or fight. And so I think I'm not sure they could really do anything else here unless they wanted to falsely admit that they had engaged in an act of racism. This is a bakery that was fifth generation. This was a bakery. He had many minority employees. In fact, one of the key witnesses against Meredith Romando was a black male employee of the bakery who'd been there, I forget, 10, 20, 30 years, however long it was, who said that she saw,

he saw Ramondo handing out stacks of these defamatory flyers. She had testified that she only handed one to a reporter, and he testified. testified to the contrary that he saw her handing them out and also giving stacks of them to students to spread around. So, you know, this was a bakery that had very good relationships with the minority community, had minority employees, and they were not going to admit that they did something wrong. You know, the bakery was fifth generation. I think it was started in 1878 or something like that. It was started by their family.

It's always been in the family. And so they just were not going to admit falsely. Now, David Gibson, who passed away in 2000, about six months after, I think it was, the verdict, his father, who was almost 90, so-called Grandpa Gibson, just passed away about two, three months ago. So Grandpa Gibson, the testimony was at trial, that his biggest fear is that he would go to his grave being known in the community as a racist. because in fact he was the opposite. He was somebody who was active in the civil rights movement in the early 60s. He had always been somebody who had advocated for equality and had treated people fairly.

And it really deeply affected them these accusations. And he didn't live to see the verdict upheld, but he did live to see the verdict and see at least his name cleared to a certain extent. his family's name cleared to a certain extent. So, you know, I think what the universities and what the, you know, what now euphemistically is called the wokesters, which I think is too kind a word for them, they throw these accusations around frivolously and tactically, but those accusations don't negatively affect people who actually are racist because they don't care. Okay.

It affects people like the Gibson's who are. are not, we're not racist, who had devoted their entire lives to civil rights and to equality in the community. And for people like the Gibson's, these were extremely serious accusations, and these were the sort of accusations that they did not want to just falsely admit to. And I think that's what happened here. As we begin to wrap up here, I want to ask you briefly, as we've seen the result of this verdict and we've seen the results of this case play out, what are the big picture implications for this? How do other colleges maybe see this and think what should we be doing differently? You know, I get asked that question a lot. Like, what's the, what's the, does this prove

that you can fight against the university? And what people have to understand is that Gibson's Bakery fought this tooth and nail, and they still are. They fought everything. They spent $5 million, over $5 million in attorney's fees fighting this. They have fought it every inch of the way and they continue to. They have outlived. The litigation has outlived the two main proprietors of the bakery, Grandpa Gibson and David Gibson. They are now gone. And so I think, unfortunately, the takeaway here is that while colleges need to be more cautious,

they need to be very careful about when they join in student, activism and the risks from that legally, but it also shows that these colleges and these universities are some of the most vicious litigants I've seen. And before I joined Cornell Law School for 22 years, I was a civil litigator. They fight like everything. And I think one of the big takeaways is that these are very powerful entities. They fight more viciously than your local chemical company. They really, and they wrap themselves in this holier than now attitude because they're educators, and therefore somehow they have some sort of moral superiority. But as we've seen in the Oberlin College case, they don't.

They really are just vicious, vicious litigants and people who have no trouble smearing others in trying to destroy them. So I think the takeaway is how dangerous, you know, woke control of corporate entities really is. That was Bill Jacobson, a Cornell law professor as well as founder of the Legal Insurrection Law Blog. Bill, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast.

And be sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal Podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, IHeartRadio, wherever you listen. And take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We read every single one that comes in, and we so appreciate your feedback. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you. you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kay Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Doug Blair. Sound designed by Lauren Evans,

Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.