A jury previously awarded Shannon Phillips $25.6 million.
Great. Racism is bad and we should stamp it out wherever we find it. I find the punditry around this one troubling. As though white people can’t experience racism.
Phillips, 52, claimed in her lawsuit that “her race was a determinative factor” in Starbucks’ decision to fire her in the wake of a 2018 racial firestorm.
In April 2018, two Black men – Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson – were arrested while waiting for a business meeting after an employee called 911 and accused the men of trespassing after they refused to make a purchase or leave the store. The arrests sparked nationwide protests and prompted Starbucks to close some of its stores for a day for racial bias training.
Less than a month after the arrests, Phillips was notified of her termination, despite claiming that she wasn’t at the store that day and was not involved in the arrests in any way.
I don’t know if it was because of her race, but if she really wasn’t at the store that way, it does sound like retaliation.
It pretty obviously was, which is why the case was so obviously a slam dunk. Basically, she stood up for the employee who called the police (essentially Starbucks’ policy at the time when people wouldn’t leave the establishment after being asked first), and got fired in turn as Starbucks was trying to clean house on the whole thing and not get called racist. She definitely had a case.
Retaliation for what?
Retaliation by Starbucks for the bad PR.
Comment deleted
(Had to do the edit because the delete function wouldn’t work)
What question?
Replied to the wrong person. Sorry
Race or not, how does a wrongful termination cause $28.3mio in damages?
I very much doubt that this employee ever would have earned that money at Starbucks, had she not been wrongfully terminated.
At the same time, the two men who were arrested for existing and for being black received a whopping $1 each.
A lot of the time these things include fines to teach them a lesson. Otherwise corporations would do this way more.
Ok, but why does the person who got fired get the difference?
At least over here, if you have something like this, the person who got fired would get adequate damages rewarded (roughly the amount of money they lost due to being fired wrongfully) while the state would sue the company for a punitory fine.
Good question! I’m not sure. Maybe we are worried that punitive damage fines would incentivize the government to start suing businesses. Just a guess though.
A lot of the time these things include fines to teach them a lesson. Otherwise corporations would do this way more.
Which is a useless tactic for cops since it’s taxpayers who pay anyhow. Still think settlements should be higher though. When half your city budget becomes paying for police settlements maybe then police reform will have a wider appeal.
What does fining corpos have to do with cops? These are 2 separate discussions.
What does fining corpos have to do with cops? These are 2 separate discussions.
Well, time to see how deep kbin will let me nest quotes.
Race or not, how does a wrongful termination cause $28.3mio in damages?
At the same time, the two men who were arrested for existing and for being black received a whopping $1 each.A lot of the time these things include fines to teach them a lesson. Otherwise corporations would do this way more.
Which is a useless tactic for cops since it’s taxpayers who pay anyhow. Still think settlements should be higher though.
When half your city budget becomes paying for police settlements maybe then police reform will have a wider appeal.
What does fining corpos have to do with cops? These are 2 separate discussions.
Conversations wander.
In this case, someone asked, (paraphrasing) “How does it make sense to get millions for a race related firing and a dollar for race related wrongful arrest” <-- Note here that arrests are generally done by cops.
Then someone else said, (paraphrasing) “Well, they do these big settlements to teach companies a lesson.”
Then I said, (paraphrasing) “Would be great if they could do that when cops wreck people’s lives, but then it would only be taxpayers footing the bill anyhow.”
Then you said, (paraphrasing) “Why are you changing the topic?”
Then I summarized, just now, to explain how I’m doing no such thing.
I realize I just restated what was already there, but – it was already there when you asked, so…
What a long winded non answer.
It answered it fine, and was on topic with an easy to follow chain of thought.
It did not answer my question. What does cops have to do in regards to the topic at hand, which is about dining corpos. Rewording the comment chain does not answer that question.
It’s not on topic. It’s a strawman.
I think your comment was on topic.
It really wasn’t on topic. It’s a strawman argument.
Thanks!
Disclaimer that I have not followed this case and I’m not a lawyer.
In the US civil cases can have both compensatory and punitive damages. Compensatory is meant to “right the wrong” where you get reimbursed for financial losses, lost time, things you had to pay for as a result of the incident, etc. Punitive is meant to punish the offender if the case finds they acted with some negligence, and ultimately get them and others to change their behavior.
Take the infamous McDonald’s coffee case. The woman who was injured originally only asked for McDonald’s to pay for her medical treatment. She required skin grafts. The jury found that McDonald’s knowing let this circumstance exist where someone was going to get a serious injury and added on punitive damages. Which the judge cut back.
An important caveat is that she was not the first person seriously injured by the temperatures they were keeping the coffee at.
McD decided the money they were saving on free coffee refills was more important than injuring their customers, which is why the punitive damages were awarded.
The lady who got the money was just the one a judge actually paid attention to.
Somewhat paid attention. The jury awarded two days of coffee revenue. The judge cut it to 3x the compensatory damages, about a half day of coffee revenue. I don’t recall if there was a law on the books about that. Some states have “tort reform” laws that limit punitive damages.
As an European, it’s kinda strange to me that the punitory damages are awarded to the person in question, for two reasons.
- Punitory damages aren’t meant to protect that one person (it’s highly unlikely that Starbucks is going to wrongfully fire the same woman a second time) but instead they are meant to protect society
- Punitory lawsuits should not depend on the legal budget of one individual
The way it works over here is like this:
There would be two lawsuits:
- The regular civil lawsuit between the wronged person and the company. The result will be compensatory measures awarded to the wronged person.
- The chamber of labour will run a separate lawsuit regarding law violations/structural issues of the company. The result will be a change in the company and punitory measures. If these include fees, they are awarded to the government.
Well that sounds like socialism! /s
I happen to be one of those Americans that think despite their many flaws, the authors of the Constitution had some fundamentally good ideas. And we used the Constitution as intended to expand individual rights after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment. Shamefully we never got around to the Equal Rights Amendment to include women.
What most Americans don’t realize is that the vast majority of what we consider foundational principles are not actually in the Constitution but are instead case law, and how recent much of that is. It wasn’t until 15 years after the Civil War that there was a Supreme Court case which established the idea that corporations are persons under the law and deserving of many of the rights granted under the Constitution using (or mis-using in my opinion) that same 14th Amendment.
Why does that matter? Because it gave corporations an “equal” seat at the table when it comes to disputes. The problem, as you point out, is that our civil dispute resolution system DOES depend on the resources of the “person” and corporations will ALWAYS have more resources. Lots and lots of cases have given corporations more rights and the result is the corportacracy we have now. In other words we went fundamentally the wrong direction diluting the power of the individual. And because corporations have such disproportionate influence on the laws and administrative procedures, we diluted the power of government to represent the people. This has been going on for ~120 years but it kicked into high gear in the 80s (Reagan era).
I’m glad that you guys are still somewhat rational about this, but unfortunately the anti-democratic trend in the US is replicating in the rest of the world. I worry that future histories will compare the rise of this garbage in the US to the start of fascism in Italy in the 1930s.
Sorry, went off on a tangent deep in the comments, but I spend too much time thinking and worrying.
From the patterns I see in the world, social structures (governments, organisations, …) are mostly on a downward trend. People in power are mostly concerned with keeping and extending their power, to the detriment of the people they are ruling.
Until it goes to far and there is a crisis so massive, that the people who are in power get swapped out and replaced by a completely different set of people. Then they spend a few years improving the situation until business as usual sets in and the downward trend sets in again.
You can see that e.g. in the founding of America, the time after the US civil war, the time after WW2 in most of Europe and in many other instances. Newly formed countries often take that chance to improve their constitution and government principles.
The thing is, contrary to e.g. Europe, the USA hasn’t had a reset like this in a very long time. Hence, corruption is handled almost as if the constitution prescribed it. Compare e.g. how funding for the election campaign of presidential candidates is handled.
In my country, candidates are severely limited in how much they can totally spend on the campaign. The current limit is at €7mio. They have to declare all donations to parties, which are also limited.
In the USA, on the other hand, there is hardly a point trying to become a candidate if you don’t have a few billionaires backing you.
I can think of one difference…
“Damages” is more than lost wages. Not sure how that relates to arrests
Getting arrested, even wrongfully, is going to fuck a lot of peoples’ lives up as much or more than getting fired. I have a special needs child, and although I’m not a single parent, cops pick me up and put me in jail wrongfully for a day or two, the details of my circumstances are such that’s going to cause substantial trauma for both my child and my wife. In my case my job would be safe, but for a great many people it would not.
I’d take being fired over being arrested all day every day and twice on Sunday.
I don’t mean to suggest she didn’t have a case, only to suggest that payouts for wrongful police action need to be much higher. Aside from the arrest itself, wrongful arrests often include damages to the victim’s body or property, possibly their dog getting shot, etc etc.
I don’t mean to suggest she didn’t have a case, only to suggest that payouts for wrongful police action need to be much higher. Aside from the arrest itself, wrongful arrests often include damages to the victim’s body or property, possibly their dog getting shot, etc etc.
Not even talking about the fact, that these guys now have newspaper articles with both of them in handcuffs, clearly showing their face and names that will come up every time a potential new employer googles their names.
Totally agree with you, wrongful arrest is much more problematic than being wrongfully fired.
Sure, but how do they arrive at $28.3 mio damages? You usually don’t get that much in damages if the person in question has been killed. I’m pretty sure, being wrongfully fired doesn’t cause as much damage as >16x of the average lifetime earnings of a person.
Huh… So companies can’t be racist against white people?!?
I hope this brings about a whole ton of new lawsuits as workers finally say enough is enough with token hires which push out white employees only to fill a position with a minority just to fill some arbitrary and rather bullshit diversity target.
I hope this brings about a whole ton of new lawsuits as workers finally say enough is enough with token hires which push out white employees only to fill a position with a minority just to fill some arbitrary and rather bullshit diversity target.
Middle aged white guy here. I’ve been in my field about 30 years. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in that field. I’ve worked with a lot of people who weren’t white. Somehow, in all that time, I’ve never run across one of these “token hires” who were only there because of their skin color.
I’ve met a lot of bigoted, racist white folks though. When you look like the stereotypical maga, folks are pretty free to share their ugliest opinions with you. Most of them have no idea (and will never try to deepen their understanding) about why the benefits of diversity are more than just not having exclusively white faces around.
Ditto here: I’ve actually seen “token” hires on gender (and only in one place), never on race.
Furthermore, that one place which had gender quotas and which at least in the departmemt I was working with clearly had hired some people for their gender, not their competence, had massive corporate culture and even profitability problems (think bankrupt bank with strong political connections that got unconditionally rescued with taxpayer money after the 2008 Crash and just kept losing billions and getting even more disfunctional).
It makes zero business sense to care about anything but competence when hiring somebody, and I say this as somebody who has actually been part of hiring decisions in a few places.
Old lady here - I was the first woman in my role in a couple of jobs back in the 80s and was accused of being a token plenty of times. Had to slog my way uphill through a mountain of sexist shit every single day while seeing men cruise along because they played golf with someone high up.
The “old boys network” is still alive and well, though its “membership” criteria are usually on things other than gender specifically: for example in the UK “membership” is often having gone to the right exclusive private schools and as those are often gender-segregated (i.e. “all boys schools” and “all girls schools”), you end up with discrimination in both the gender and social class one was born in axes.
Personally I find the whole “being buddies with the boss” type career progression extremelly unprofessional and any manager who is taking decisions in a professional capacity based on who his or her mates are, is working against the best interests of the company and needs to be replaced.
Then again, my professional training during my core professional learning years was mostly done in The Netherlands so I’m very strict on such things in the context of the management cultures in other countries I worked in such as the UK and Portugal were cronyism is rife in management, often linked to the kind of pre-existing relationships formed in non-gender-neutral situations.
PS: And the place were I saw “token” women openly had quotas and the incompetent but somehow working here thing only affected permanent employees in management positions. The interesting part is that of the 3 female low level managers in my department one was clearly very competent, one was clearly very incompetent and one was unclear. Further, this was the single most sexist (as in, very machist) place I ever worked (and my career now spans two and a half decades and 4 countries).
I get the feeling that the very competent manager there who happenned to be a woman lost from there being quotas for female managers rather than gained from it (she constantly had to prove her competence and was often not take seriously), whilst clearly the incompetent one was only there because of quotas and in meetings acted as an “attractive female provider of adoration” for her manager.
None of this justifies the unjust treatment you suffered, by the way.
There were two women that were rumored to have been hired/promoted into a VP position and a Director position only for their gender about 6 years ago. I didn’t work with either of them closely. They both left the company a year later. I’m not sure whether that was vindication of the rumors, or just a turn of circumstance, but worst case their gender bought them only a temporary position.
Just to be clear - plenty more women in both leadership and technical positions, and have been for years. Just those two were the only ones where I ever got a hint of that sort of thing.
Yeah, this one time was also the only time I saw any such thing and my career spans over 25 years and 4 countries.
I think we’re overall in agreement, just putting a finer point on it - On this and the related racial topic, I’m of the opinion that far more people think these policies result in unqualified people getting jobs they don’t deserve than ever actually happens. No business has payroll to spare that they can just shovel onto worthless bodies to satisfy diversity goals, and I refuse to believe that there’s more than a vanishingly small percentage of folks who remain in such a position longer than the time it takes for management to realize they are worthless.
Well managed places hire the best person for the job and don’t need to try to hide the visible results (racial or gender imbalances in a company which cannot be explained by pre-existing manpower inbalances in that professional domain) of the kind of widespread mismanagement which includes treating hiring responsabilities as a license to do favours for one’s mates, using yet more merit-ignoring practices such as quotas.
It really isn’t a benefit for anybody to be hired as a token anything because places which hire people for token reasons are just covering up mismanagement with it and are thus not good places to work in.
PS: I can tell you from my own professional experience which is quite extensive (as I worked as a Freelancer in most of my career so saw a lot more places than average) that lots of places do have payrol to spare and there’s a lot of wastefulness going on in the business world: the idea of a Free Market where there’s lots of competition is pure fantasy in a lot of domains and even in competitive areas non-core-business departments often have a lot more budge than they would if they were in an Industry were what they do is core to the business.
On the outside of businesses, the Economy is riddled with markets with less than “flat playing fields” (most of them, actually have barriers to entry, some even being natural cartels and monopolies) and the very same informational-advantages that allow for example companies in expert domains to swindle non-expert customers (say, car mechanics overcharging) also apply inside the companies themselves (which is why people at times discover to their surprise that the CEO of their company is a complete total idiot).
On the off chance you’re only stupid and not just a racist arguing in bad faith - did you miss the part where she won the suit and is getting $27m?
