[SCA-AE] the lawsuit/settlement/etc.

[Chuck Burke]

Clarissa,

You are approaching this with common sense.  Unfortunately, in the world 
of litigation, common sense falls by the wayside in favor of the blame 
game and the jackpot lawsuit mentality, both of which have been around 
for a long time.  This looks like a case of someone looking at the SCA 
and saying "AHA!  They're the ones who got him started on this activity 
that he used as a cover to bring the children to his home, and he met at 
least one of the victims through the SCA, it must be their fault!"

I know that doesn't make any sense to those of us sitting on the legal 
sidelines.  What makes sense to us doesn't matter.  What matters is what 
a jury will believe, or in the case of a settlement, what the SCA's 
legal team thinks a jury can be led to believe.  Facts and commons sense 
often have nothing to do with that, especially in cases that can be tied 
strongly to emotion, such as child molestation.

YiS,
Dragos Pelikanos



On 2/8/2012 2:06 AM, Heidi/Clarissa wrote:
> Okay, I've poked around on-line some more rather than just relying
> what's been put out by the BoD or written by folks with more or less
> knowledge and involvement in the whole situation.
>
> FWIW, if you Google "Ben Schragger", you get 24K+ hits.  Needless to
> say, I haven't read them all.  :-)
>
> However, I read more than a few, including wading my way through some
> painful legalese and wishing I had Michael sat beside me.  And I'll
> admit that it's very possible I did not read something that would
> clearly answer my questions.
>
> It still seems to me that the SCA is being held responsible for his
> actions when there was no expectation that they, the Corporation or even
> its local representatives/officers, could know what he was doing.  It
> also seems that the standards to which it is claimed he should have been
> held are those of more recent times than 1999.  I understand the Two
> Deep Rule; I'm not sure it was as widely applied *then* to the point
> that it was the generally accepted standard or practice.
>
> And I still don't understand how the Corporation can be considered
> responsible for the actions of the individual just because he was
> engaging in the same activity outside the SCA that he did as an officer
> of the Society.  If I'm at Thanksgiving dinner at the home of my friend
> the dance master whom I've asked to teach me<insert name of complicated
> dance here>, does that mean he's responsible  and legally culpable for
> my injury?  Maybe it's me, but I can't see it that way for either situation.
>
> I'm curious if and how the SCA's lawyers tried to contend that his
> membership in the SCA did not equal corporate
> knowledge/approval/involvement in the actions done outside its purview.
> (I hope that made sense.  It's late and I'm tired.)
>
> Clarissa, the still-confused who will try hard to drop this now
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