Court rejects appeals by Oberlin College, Gibson's Bakery from 2019 civil trial

AKRON — The 9th District Court of Appeals in Akron on Thursday rejected appeals by both Oberlin College and Gibson's Bakery over the results of a 2019 civil trial. The court unanimously upheld all of Lorain County Common Pleas Judge John Miraldi's rulings in the bakery's long-running civil case against the college, stemming from student protests regarding alleged racist behavior by the business on West College Street in Oberlin in November 2016. A jury awarded the bakery and its owners, the late David and Allyn W. "Grandpa" Gibson, more than $44 million in damages in June 2019. Miraldi lowered that to $25 million to conform with state law, but he also awarded more than $6.2 million in fees to the Gibsons' attorneys. The monetary award has been stayed pending the appeals process. Read the ruling In a 50-page ruling on the dueling appeals filed by the college and the Gibsons, Judges Donna Carr, Jennifer Hensal and Betty Sutton overruled three arguments made by the college and one by the bakery. The court said Miraldi was right to deny the college's request for a new trial and that his rulings on the amount of damages and attorney fees owed the Gibsons were appropriate. The Gibsons also appealed the damages award, saying it didn't sufficiently punish the college for its behavior. The appeals court also rejected that argument. Through the trial and a more than two-year appeals process and the deaths of both David and Grandpa Gibson, the Gibson family persevered, attorney Lee Plakas said. "The Gibsons fought the good fight, as the family has done for over 130 years," he said Thursday. "Somewhere high above us, Grandpa and Dave Gibson are smiling to know that the truth still matters." The unanimous appeals court decision "shows that the judges recognized the importance of the case on both a regional and national level and methodically and insightfully dissected the evidence and the record which supported the verdict," Plakas said. "I was very impressed with the judges' command of and reference to specific evidentiary portions of the very large record that confirmed, even to the judges, that in fact truth does still matter." In a statement provided to The Chronicle-Telegram on Thursday, Oberlin College said it was "obviously disappointed that the appeals court affirmed the judgment in its ruling earlier today." "We are reviewing the Court's opinion carefully as we evaluate our options and determine next steps," it said. "In the meantime, we recognize that the issues raised by this case have been challenging, not only for the parties involved in the lawsuit, but for the entire Oberlin community. We remain committed to strengthening the partnership between the college, the city of Oberlin and its residents, and the downtown business community. We will continue in that important work while remaining focused on our core educational mission." The ruling The appeals court noted the "significant local and national media attention" around the case, and how much of the outside focus "has been on an individual's First Amendment right to protest and voice opinions in opposition to events occurring around them locally, nationally and globally." The appeals court did not take those arguments into consideration, Carr wrote. The appeals court "must emphasize, however, that the sole focus of this appeal is on the separate conduct of Oberlin and (former Vice President and Dean of Students Meredith) Raimondo that allegedly caused damage to the Gibsons, not on the First Amendment rights of individuals to voice opinions or protest," she wrote. Oberlin College, and media rights and free speech groups that filed briefs on its behalf, argued that a finding of defamation "could have a chilling effect on students' rights to free speech at colleges and universities across the country." Miraldi agreed, but that wasn't the issue at hand, the appeals court said. Instead, "the Gibsons' libel claim focused solely on whether Oberlin had disseminated false, written statements of fact that caused the Gibsons significant harm," the appeals court found. In one of three "assignments of error," Oberlin College argued that Miraldi improperly denied its request to dismiss the case in its favor or overturn the jury's verdict. It argued that the Gibsons failed to prove that the college libeled them or the bakery and that any alleged libel was constitutionally protected opinion. Students protesting the arrest of three of their number gathered outside the bakery for two days in November 2016. They passed out flyers saying the bakery had a long history of racist discrimination and profiling. Raimondo also was there and the appeals court said testimony at the trial was that she and other college employees actively passed out flyers and assisted students who were protesting. Allegations that bakery employee Allyn D. Gibson — the son and grandson of the owners — "assaulted" a student for shoplifting in an incident that was the catalyst for the student protests were on the flyers. The allegation was repeated in an Oberlin College Student Senate resolution that was posted on campus. The college argued the flyer and senate resolution were simply opinions, "but it has focused its arguments throughout this case on statements alleging merely that the Gibsons were racists," Carr wrote. "Despite Oberlin's arguments to the contrary, the potentially libelous statements in this case include much more than calling the Gibsons 'racists.'" In fact, Miraldi found "that both the flyer and the Senate Resolution were not statements of constitutionally protected opinion but were defamatory," Carr wrote, and that he focused "on the statements about the Gibsons and their bakery having a history of racial profiling and discrimination toward students and residents and the statements about an 'assault' of a student by an owner or owners of the bakery." Miraldi "found that allegations of an assault, if untrue, were defamatory per se and Oberlin has not raised a timely or proper challenge to that ruling by the trial court," Carr wrote. A "reasonable reader" of the flyer and resolution could be led to believe that the Gibsons "had a verifiable history of racially profiling shoplifters on that basis for years," even though no such testimony was offered or allowed in court. And "a reasonable person could conclude that Oberlin (College) took actions to directly publish and/or assist in publishing the flier," Carr wrote. The Gibsons called multiple witnesses to testify that they had never experienced racism while working at or patronizing the store, while Oberlin College employees who tried to testify they had heard reports or rumors of racial profiling or discrimination had their testimony rejected as hearsay. The college "did not call witnesses to testify about their personal experiences with the Gibsons. Instead, the defendants sought to have Oberlin administrators testify about 'what Oberlin heard' about the Gibsons from community members," Carr wrote. "Oberlin's excluded evidence was hearsay, while the Gibsons' evidence on this issue was not." Oberlin College also argued the Gibsons had no claim against Raimondo for interfering with the business relationship between the bakery and the college, but the appeals court rejected that argument. David Gibson and Allyn W. "Grandpa" Gibson were required to prove at trial that Oberlin College intended to cause, knew or should have known that it would cause serious emotional distress, and that its conduct was "extreme and outrageous, going beyond all bounds of decency and considered intolerable in a civilized society" causing "psychic injury" or "mental anguish beyond what a reasonable person would be expected to endure," according to the law. The appeals court said any statements of alleged libel were not protected by the First Amendment. The Gibsons were not public figures, for whom the rules are different when it comes to allegations of libel, the court ruled. The Gibsons presented evidence that when the college learned "that the student allegations of assault and racial profiling might be false," it started doing business with the bakery again but refused to correct the statements in the flyer or the Student Senate resolution. "The Gibsons also presented evidence that they had been continually taunted and harassed for many months, that their business and property had been vandalized, and that Grandpa Gibson had broken his back after an encounter with someone he believed was trying to harass him or break into his apartment," Carr wrote, adding that the appeals court "cannot conclude that reasonable minds could only conclude that this conduct failed to rise to the level of extreme and outrageous." Oberlin College had also requested a new trial, a request Miraldi denied. In its appeal, it argued Miraldi gave the jury bad instructions about libel, improperly excluded evidence and should have reduced compensatory damages. The appeals court disagreed, saying Miraldi properly instructed the jury. Oberlin College failed to cite any legal authority to support different jury instructions, didn't give Miraldi grounds for its objection and forfeited its right to raise the issue in a motion for a new trial or on appeal, Carr wrote. Miraldi also properly kept testimony about the shoplifting incident that led to the protest out of the civil trial, the appeals court ruled. The jury originally awarded the Gibsons more than $11 million in compensatory damages and $33 million in punitive damages, for a total of $44 million that Miraldi reduced to $25 million under Ohio law. It was up to Oberlin College to demonstrate that Miraldi made mistakes in his rulings on capping monetary damages — which the appeals court ruled it did not. The appeals court "will not make an argument for Oberlin" on that matter, Carr wrote. The Gibsons' argument that punitive monetary damages didn't go far enough toward punishing Oberlin College for damaging their reputation and the reputation of the bakery was flawed because the family didn't establish a constitutional right to "a particular degree of punitive damages." The Ohio Supreme Court has held that defendants subject to punitive damages also have a right to fairness "which requires that they receive notice of the severity of the penalty the state may impose for their conduct," Carr wrote. The Gibsons "failed to establish" that caps on punitive damages "infringed on their constitutional rights," she wrote. The five-week trial in 2019 was extended by a sixth week for arguing motions, involved 33 witnesses, 32 depositions taken by the college, and 33 motions by the college that the Gibsons and their lawyers had to respond to, according to the bakery's attorneys. The Gibsons' attorneys spent 14,417 hours on the case, at an average hourly rate of $290, according to testimony in the case, and Miraldi ordered the college to pay them more than $6.2 million in fees. His calculation also was based on the skills of the attorneys involved, the time and labor involved and the difficulty of the issues in the case, he said, and the appeals court agreed. Plakas said David Gibson, who died in November 2019 after battling cancer, had worried the college would wait him and his father out until they died. Grandpa Gibson died Feb. 12. Plakas said he also was concerned but "recognized that for the judges to give it the attention it deserved, it would take longer than usual" for a decision to be made on the appeals. "Ultimately the decision of a court generally outlives all of us and I think the Gibsons, as I indicated, are looking at this decision somewhere from a place high above us. In that regard, I'm glad the judges took the time the case deserved," Plakas said. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @daveobrienCT.