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Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are damages assessed in order to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct and/or to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some of the punitive damages in award.
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin. Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain group. Governments can discriminate in a de facto fashion or explicitly in law, for example through policies of racial segregation, disparate enforcement of laws, or disproportionate allocation of resources. Some jurisdictions have anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the government or individuals from discriminating based on race in various circumstances. Some institutions and laws use affirmative action to attempt to overcome or compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. In some cases, this is simply enhanced recruitment of members of underrepresented groups; in other cases, there are firm racial quotas. Opponents of strong remedies like quotas characterize them as reverse discrimination, where members of a dominant or majority group are discriminated against.
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African/Aboriginal and three quarters European ancestry.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, genetic information, and retaliation for participating in a discrimination complaint proceeding and/or opposing a discriminatory practice.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that a prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so—may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The Court ruled that this practice violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case gave rise to the term Batson challenge, an objection to a peremptory challenge based on the standard established by the Supreme Court's decision in this case. Subsequent jurisprudence has resulted in the extension of Batson to civil cases and cases where jurors are excluded on the basis of sex.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 is a United States labor law, passed in response to United States Supreme Court decisions that limited the rights of employees who had sued their employers for discrimination. The Act represented the first effort since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to modify some of the basic procedural and substantive rights provided by federal law in employment discrimination cases. It provided the right to trial by jury on discrimination claims and introduced the possibility of emotional distress damages and limited the amount that a jury could award. It added provisions to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protections expanding the rights of women to sue and collect compensatory and punitive damages for sexual discrimination or harassment.
Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545 (1967), found in favor of the petitioner (Whitus), who had been convicted for murder, and as such reversed their convictions. This was due to the Georgia jury selection policies, in which it was alleged racial discrimination had occurred.
Edna May Griffin was an American civil rights pioneer and human rights activist. Known as the "Rosa Parks of Iowa", her court battle against the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines in 1948, State of Iowa v. Katz, foreshadowed the civil rights movement and became a landmark case before the Iowa Supreme Court.
Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial group are legal in the United States and other countries. While the racial composition of juries is not dictated by law, racial discrimination in the selection of jurors is specifically prohibited. Depending on context, the phrases "all-white jury" or "all-black jury" can raise the expectation that deliberations may be unfair.
Wilbert McClure was an American boxer. As an amateur he won gold medals in the light middleweight division at the 1959 Pan American Games and the 1960 Olympics. As a professional he competed from 1961 to 1970.
Liechtenstein, a multiparty constitutional monarchy with a unicameral parliament and a government chosen by the reigning prince at its direction, is a prosperous and free country that is generally considered to have an excellent human-rights record.
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African-American. Such laws remained in force until the 1960s. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even if several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white Southern Democrat-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era.
The Eighth Round by Zeke Wilson (II) is a non-fiction literary work that documents a precedent-setting court battle about one form of racism that had previously not been defined legally; that of same-race discrimination, wherein the perpetrator and the object of the discrimination are of the same racial group.
Zeke Wilson fought a precedent-setting court battle that defined the view of a modern form of racism, that of same-race discrimination, wherein the perpetrator and the object of the discrimination are of the same racial group.
Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College was an Ohio legal case concerning libel, tortious interference, and infliction of distress. The case ultimately involved questions about the responsibilities of universities during student protests.
Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case that re-examined the Batson Challenge. Established by Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the Batson Challenge prohibits jury selectors from using peremptory challenges on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and sex. Powers expanded the jurisdictions of this principle, allowing all parties within a case, defendants especially, to question preemptory challenges during a jury selection, regardless of race. This holding was protected under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Owen Diaz vs. Tesla was a discrimination lawsuit filed against electric car manufacturer Tesla, Inc. The plaintiff, Owen Diaz, was an elevator operator at the Tesla Fremont Factory in California between 2015 and 2016. The lawsuit stated that Diaz faced constant harassment including racial slurs. According to the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Fremont factory was racially segregated and Black workers testifed that they were subjected to racist slurs, racial drawings, and were given the most menial and physically demanding work. Working conditions at the plant were so unacceptable, the department stated, that many Black employees had been forced to quit. J. Bernard Alexander III, one of Diaz's lawyers, told jurors that the use of the “n-word” was pervasive and virtually everywhere at Fremont factory.
Sines v. Kessler was a civil lawsuit against various organizers, promoters, and participants in the Unite the Right rally, a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. The trial began in October 2021, and on November 23, the jury reached a mixed verdict in which they found various defendants liable on claims of civil conspiracy and race-based harassment or violence. They also found James A. Fields, Jr., the perpetrator of the car attack against counterprotesters at the rally, liable for assault and battery and intentional infliction of harm. Altogether, the jury awarded the plaintiffs more than $25 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The judge reduced the jury's punitive damages verdict from $24 million to $350,000.
References
- ↑ Wilson v. McClure et al, 135 F. Supp. 2d 66 (D. Mass. 2001)
- ↑ 29 M.L.W. 274
- ↑ Wilson, Zeke. (2005, 2009) The Eighth Round. ISBN 978-0-9825174-0-6 Punch Out Publishing