(07-15-2013 08:55 PM)bullet Wrote: They have violated the Cleary Act. In addition, if they knew they had a child molester roaming campus they knew there was an issue and they still allowed him to bring children on campus. People have sued for McDonald's having their coffee too hot. They don't have to be certain of losing for there to be a risk. People often pay if the cost of defending themselves exceeds the settlement costs.
And even if they hadn't committed perjury or violated the Cleary Act, what do you think the 3's chances of getting another job would be now? The same situation applied then. They knew there was someone who had been accused of molesting children and they didn't even distance themselves from him at that point. They would have to go far away where no one had heard of them or the situation.
In the real world people do think about their personal liability and personal job prospects. Its not some theoretical exercise about whether they would lose a lawsuit or not. They are much more likely to think about the impact on themselves than about Joe's reputation or a football team's recruiting. There's a reason the one guy kept that file on Sandusky and locked it up.
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Once again, your understanding of the law is flawed. You should read the McDonald's case before you cite it. It's almost universally misunderstood, which is the only reason why it is considered to be the poster child for frivolous lawsuits. It actually isn't a frivolous lawsuit. It just has a weird set of circumstances, and it is easier to cite it than read it. McDonalds was sued because their coffee was unreasonably hot. I don't want to get too off topic, but the basic idea behind the case was that McD served a lady some coffee through a drive thru. McD knew that the customers who were ordering the coffee via the drive thru in the morning weren't drinking the coffee until later. So, to keep their customers happy, McD was serving really, really hot coffee in the morning, so it would still be hot when the customer finally drank it. To put things in perspective, McD's coffee was so hot that it was literally undrinkable. It would have burned the mouth of anyone who tried to drink it (
she got skin grafts and spent a week in a hospital). And, despite its large deviation from the public's expectations based on standard industry practice, McD didn't warn customers of the extra danger. Essentially, they knew or should have known that their customers would use their product in a certain way, they then knew or should have known that the failure to disclose that their coffee was significantly hotter than the coffee of any other retailer, which could lead to injuries, and yet they didn't sufficiently warn their customers of the danger. Then, when their customers were injured, they were liable. There was a special relationship (seller-customer) and a deviation from accepted industry standards, so there was a duty to disclose, there were insufficient warnings, so there was a breach of that duty, the breach of the duty was something like 80% of the proximate cause of the injury and the actual cause of the injury, and obviously there was a significant injury. It wasn't just some random lawsuit out of nowhere for no reason. Even then, using your example, Jim Cantalupo (McD's CEO) was never sued.
I don't dispute that PSU hasn't been sued. I think that State actually just settled. I just haven't heard of anyone suing anyone in an individual capacity.
"People often pay if the cost of defending themselves exceeds the settlement costs." You are 100% wrong. All of them have indemnification agreements with the university. Had Sandusky won, his expenses would have been $0. The exact terms of the indemnity agreement is complicated and depends on the contract, but your general assertion is incorrect as it applies to their personal finances.
Your statement about their job prospects is misleading at best. Refusing to take half-measures is the definition of distancing oneself. There was a sex scandal at Syracuse where someone was (wrongfully IMHO) accused of molesting children, but JB, the Chancellor, and the athletic director all still have their jobs, and the former chancellor and former AD are still in good graces. So, when appropriate action is taken, there are no negative job-related personal affects.
Your statement about the "real world" is also wrong. The expectation of liability (or gain) is what drives people's decision-making process, which is what you are characterizing as a theoretical exercise. It's commonly referred to as a cost-benefit analysis, and if you aren't making at least a rough cost-benefit analysis in your head when you makes significant decisions, then you are irrational.