The 'shareholders' are the American people, whether you are an auto worker, a lawyer, a professional or any employee that has an IRA or a company retirement plan. Mango, Those are internal costs of doing business as bad decisions as they may be. Athletes are the product and they are the revenue drivers of the business. People don't come to see the garden, they come to see the players and almost everything else is a cost-center. This lady is recieving an award of $11.6 million dollars for a year of alleged harrassment while her market value at her job was $260,000. Does anyone not see the complete lunacy on a value versus price basis? One could argue that Jalen Rose and Mo Taylor if they performed well, would have increased their ability to win games therefore may get into the playoffs or deeper or increase attendance, therefore revenue would increase. Therefore it was a business risk to sign or cut them and not a lawsuit. I believe in fair compensation for damages, but this is ridiculous.
So what is fair compensation for sexual harassment anyway? And I wouldn't really fault her for sueing for that amount, I'd fault the jury for giving it to her.
Thank you. I agree Sexual Harrasment is still probably a major problem in today's society, but 11.6 million dollars is ridiculous. I don't know if you can' really quantify damage done for sexual harrasment in a monetary amount, but that makes no sense. One thing I just found out too, is that the entire case was tried in a civil court, and was never brought to a criminal court. In a civil suit, if there is enough evidence say that the defendant may have committed the crime, they are penalized, as opposed to in criminal court where you have to prove that the person is guilty. If she really wanted to punish the Knicks for wrongdoing and all, why wouldn't you attempt a criminal case first? Especially in New York. I am not saying what she did is wrong, or defending I. Thomas, if he did what she say he did (which he probably did some of it, if not most). But the way the case was brought up and the amount of money rewarded to her seem shady. Then she came up in a press conference to say what she did was for all working women in America. Come on, she just got 12 million dollars. If she really did this for all working women, she would donate some of that money to some cause for women who are sexually harrassed or something. (Oh, and before someone argues this. I do know that it will be appealed and appeal courts generally drastically reduce reparation and monetary damages, so that both sides will probably end up settling before the it is actually heard in an Appeal's court.)
F.D. Khan, You are taking what seems to be a pure B-School approach to this discussion . Looking at the way the Knicks have been ran as a business in recent years, I have grave difficulty considering them worthy of being a role model as a properly ran business. Yes, I can appreciate the difference - distinction between the players (revenue producers: called Line in some business models) and the Front Office (overhead: called Staff in some business models). There have been several stories that the Knicks could have settled beforehand for something in the 5 - 6 million range. They decide not to and now it appears that it will cost them substantially more. The numerous bad trades and similar poor decisions by the Knicks have already been discussed in this thread and previous threads, so little need to delve to much on them again. The Knicks payroll for 2006 - 2007 was approximately 117 million and they accomplished very little. In regards to Jalen Rose and Mo Taylor possibly playing well............both were/are on the downside of their careers and were paid too much. It was beyond a longshot to expect them to play at a level to justify their salaries. You charitably call it a business risk while I think that it just illustrates the incompetency of the Knicks organization. Mo was picked up by the Kings for a cheap salary, but it appears that he had even less value than that since he was eventually released. 2006 - 2007 NBA Salaries Maurice Taylor .............. $1,065,918 [min, counts $744,551, rel 1/23] If the 11.6 million dollar settlement for Ms A.B. Sanders versus her market value of 260,00 is too much of a spread for you to digest, then ponder the salaries vs True Market Value of Dolan and Thomas who both likely make substantially more than the 260,000 of Ms Sanders. I wouldn't want either one of those gentlemen employed by the Houston Rockets even at salaries of $1 a year. Perhaps some Knicks fans and shareholders of the parent company feel the same way.
ha! most of you were wrong and i was right. she was a victim of sexual harrassment and it's worth more than you think. that lady got good reviews and could have moved on to another better paying job, but instead got fired for asking for dignity at work. msg is lucky they weren't hammered for more money than that. and i have to say that msg lawyers are as stupid as the people who hire them. their case was not good, but they made is soooo much worse.
I guess I'm still not understanding your complaint. Are you upset because some diluted share of that $11.6 million is coming out of your pocket? I'm not sure what her previous salary has to do with what the settlement should be. If she was working in the call center making $8/hour, should it be cheaper for Thomas to sexually harass her and for MSG to condone an environment of sexual harassment? If it costs the shareholders something -- even if it were me -- that's a good thing; maybe they'll boot their incompetent management team out. If they did, they'd probably get a decent return on their $11.6 million.
Except these are punitive damages, not compensatory damages. Punitive damages are valued based on the giver, not the receiver - they are designed to punish. How much her "value" is is totally irrelevent to the amount of punitive damages.
This is a question I always want to ask. Perhaps those lawyers here can answer me. How do they figure the money amount? Why is it 11.6 million in this case? BTW, what does it cost Isiah Thomas personally, apart from his reputation?
Heck, he should owe a million just for stupidity. A black man calling a black woman a b**** is less offensive than if a white man does it? WTF? What a douche.
I am not a lawyer, but the jury found that the Garden owes $6 million for allowing a hostile work environment to exist and $2.6 million for retaliation. MSG chairman James Dolan owes $3 million. For the jury to increase the punitive damage amount from 10 million to 11.6 million means that Thomas' and Dolan's grossly mishandled the situation from the get-go.
I'm all for any hardship to NY teams...Yankees, Knicks, Rangers....Doesn't matter. But $11 mil!! More then 40X earnings! Even the Wall Street guys would blush at that valuation.
My question was, How did they come up with those numbers? You've got to have some basis to "calculate" it, right? Is it kind of like how they decide the number of years some convict is to serve in jail?
Sounds like she was more incompetent then struggling. I don't see how race has anything to do with it. Would this case be any different if she was white?
I'm sure she was struggling with a $250,000 a year salary, and if you were originally talking about Isiah, he makes millions and has a very high profile and public job, especially being in NY.
She wasn't going to be able to get another Executive position in the NBA, she should be entitled to a big award.
