2y ago

Starbucks ordered to pay extra $2.7M to employee who said she was fired for being white

abcnews.go.com

A jury previously awarded Shannon Phillips $25.6 million.

39 comments

- As though white people can’t experience racism.
  Plenty of progressives believe precisely that, sadly.
  
  White people can't experience systemic racism in the US. A whole load of people can't articulate the difference between systemic racism and plain ol race based bigotry racism.
  
  I think the problem stems from there being two beliefs (that I know of so far) where people believe in systemic racism and some believe in social racism. My fiance believes in systemic racism where you can't be racist to someone who is white because their race is in power of the government, we bud heads all the time because that doesn't make any sense to me
  
  What? No we don't, Jesus conservatives are such dumbasses that believe anything they want to hear
- 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?
- Comment deleted
  (Had to do the edit because the delete function wouldn’t work)
  
  What question?
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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  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.

39 comments