Nolte: Oberlin College Claims Poverty to Avoid Paying Punitive Damages to Gibson’s Bakery

In this Nov. 22, 2017 photo, pedestrians pass the storefront of Gibson's Food Mart & Baker
AP Photo/Dake Kang

Although IRS reports show the university is worth around $1 billion, Oberlin College still claimed poverty to avoid paying punitive damages to Gibson’s Bakery.

As Breitbart News reported this week, the far-left Oberlin College lost a defamation case filed by Gibson’s Bakery after a local jury found the university liable for falsely accusing the family bakery of racism.

The jury ordered Oberlin on Friday to pay Gibson’s $11.2 million in compensatory damages for defamation and intentional interference with a business.

Legal Insurrection reported on Thursday that “the jury awarded a total of $33 million in punitive damages, which will probably be reduced by the court to $22 million because of the state law cap at twice compensatory.”

Legal Insurrection has been following the case for two years — since the beginning — and reports that the school’s only defense against a sizable punitive award is to pretend it is poor, despite holding assets that amount to a billion — with a “b” — dollars and despite paying some of its staffers more than a half-million dollars a year:

Oberlin College was so hellbent on getting the message out that their cash liquidity was in such dire straits — as the eight-person jury was figuring out if they wish to add $22.4 million to the school’s legal verdict bill — that they brought out the school’s president, Carmen Twillie Ambar to the stand to tell that part the story.

“We’ve created deficits … and over the next ten years, if this continues, that is unsustainable and we will not exist,” Ambar told the jury. She even indicated the school’s grants — about $60 million a year from the school, and lots of students get those scholarships as only 10% of them pay the full $70,000 a year — were important to preserve as “the accessibility of education” was a key component of the school’s purpose.

However…

The college has more than $1 billion in funds and net assets according to the latest IRS 990 form, an endowment fund that had grown from $440 million to $887 million in the last 20 years, and because of its non-profit status, pays no taxes on any property it owns.

It also had 18 members of their administration making more than $100,00 a year. The president and chief financial officer of the school were both making more than $500,000 a year.

Grifters gonna grift…

The day after Donald Trump won the presidency, this nutball school apparently decided to take out its impotent woke-rage on this poor bakery, which has been part of the Oberlin community for more than a century.

It all started when three Oberlin students (who would later plead guilty in a plea deal) attempted to steal bottles of wine.

The proprietors caught the students and, while attempting to hold them until police arrived, were allegedly roughed up by the shoplifters. But because the students are black and the proprietors white — and with no respect for due process or facts — Oberlin staffers and students decided some vigilantism was in order and did everything in their considerable power to destroy this local bakery forever, to smite it off the map.

Classes were canceled so hundreds of students could protest in front of the small store while enjoying free food and drink, courtesy of the school. School staffers handed out fliers that basically described the family-owned bakery as the local branch of the KKK.

As a result, the bakery had to lay off almost all of its employees and barely avoided bankruptcy.

In the end, the three shoplifters said race had nothing to do with what happened.

For those of you interested in incurring $200,000 in debt before you even enter the workforce, it looks as though you can major in Mob Justice at Oberlin.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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