Michigan State paying out $500 million - Is it excessive? That's $10,000 per student

Heard an interview of a MSU administrator yesterday. Little or any will come from taxpayers. They'll get the funds from insurance and tuition. So the math thrown out so far is stupid and invalid. Typical reactionary letsrunners.

depends..... wrote:

Not sure if every claimant was represented, but yes, lawyers are going to get a large sum of money. 25-40%.

As for whether this amount is excessive, I disagree. 400 young girls sexually assaulted by a doctor and a university turning a blind eye. I would give any one of these girls (remember, a lot of them are teenagers), at least a million if not more. Heck, I was hoping it would have been a billion. Because part of this is to send the message to Mich State that they are terrible scumbags.

Kudos to that dad who tried to get at Nassar in court.

Who is the bad guy here? - Nassar. He is the bad guy.

It's a big stretch to call MSU folks out to be bad guys. It all looks so simple with 20/20 hindsight. Easy to criticize from that perspective and that money-making agenda. MSU is a very big institution with thousands and thousands of people involved in various capacities. Lawyers love to impose impossible standards of "knowledge" and responsibility. This is a money grab. The bad guy is in jail and is being punished for the crimes he committed.

explain this wrote:

How is it possible that NCAA punishments were warranted for the Penn State scandal, but not for this mess?

The NCAA realized it should not have penalized Penn State with NCAA sanctions. The NCAA shortened the penalty.

The NCAA is established (in part) to cover a level playing field for athletic programs. This sort of thing does not fall into its purview.

vivalarepublica wrote:

Well, the endowment is $3 billion, so maybe they could take from that and put off the dorm upgrades with personal bathrooms and lounges for each room.

Endowment money cannot be used for whatever the university wants to use it for. Most of the time when someone gives a gift (money) to a university it is targeted to a specific program like endowing a professorship or chair or to build a building.

The incidents were brought to the attention of administrators who did nothing.

here are some insights wrote:

Heard an interview of a MSU administrator yesterday. Little or any will come from taxpayers. They'll get the funds from insurance and tuition. So the math thrown out so far is stupid and invalid. Typical reactionary letsrunners.

I heard that as well.

Also, I do not appreciate someone changing the title of my original post.

Luv2Run wrote:

John Utah wrote:

Who is the bad guy here? - Nassar. He is the bad guy.

It's a big stretch to call MSU folks out to be bad guys. It all looks so simple with 20/20 hindsight. Easy to criticize from that perspective and that money-making agenda. MSU is a very big institution with thousands and thousands of people involved in various capacities. Lawyers love to impose impossible standards of "knowledge" and responsibility. This is a money grab. The bad guy is in jail and is being punished for the crimes he committed.

The incidents were brought to the attention of administrators who did nothing.

Yes, that's what lawyers say and that's how they word it. But what does tha mean in reality. I feel quite comfortable is saying that administrators did not know the exact details of what was happening, how many people, how he did it, etc. It's one thing to know that. It's another thing to have some random memo or email in a stack of millions stating that one individual among thousands and thousands was suspected of doing something wrong. Can you imagine how many HR type complaints there are in the MSU system? These guys aren't the police. Call the freaking police if it's a serious crime. There are two sides to this. You are only looking at what the money-grabbing lawyers are telling you. Lastly, the bad guy is sitting in jail.

This money should be a boon to therapists

There are 300 separate victims. At least. THREE HUNDRED. For comparison's sake - there were just over 300 runners who started the US Olympic Marathon trials in Los Angeles in 2016. Imagine every single one of them being a rape victim at Michigan State. That's how large this is.

There are two ways that the case could hurt Mich State. First, enough higher up employees knew about it/heard rumblings and didn't do enough to investigate. or Second. They "didn't have any idea this was happening" - which could lead to the conclusion that the school has such poor oversight and institutional control over their doctors/employees that Nasser could freely rape 300 girls and get away with it.

Either way is terrible. And all it would take is one e-mail, one document, one "I reported this years ago" statement and not only would a jury punish Michigan State, but it would probably decide to put the number in the billions and send the school into bankruptcy.

This is a high profile, highly sensitive issue. We're talking about the olympic gymnastics team featured in national news for months talking about what happened..... the potential for an emotionally charged jury award is HUGE.

For $500 million, the school got out for a bargain.

I would also want to see the insurance policies for Michigan State.

According to this:

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/05/michigan_state_wont_say_how_it.html

The school has $39million max GL policy. If it is a claims based policy, then it would all be tapped out in one or two years.

But if it were an occurrence based policy - there could be multiple policies in effect.

I supposed we'll find out if there are declaratory judgment actions filed because of a dispute.

If it was so bad why didn't anyone call the cops? MSU is not the police department or the FBI.

If victim's parents didn't even know what was going on then how in the hell do MSU administrators VERY far removed from this situation know all of the horrible details? Why aren't the parents criticized for oversight and control over their own children? Poor oversight on their part. Why were parent sending their children to a known sex criminal?

Changing titles of other peoples' posts is not okay with me. C'mon LRC stop doing this.

a famous poster wrote:

I feel for the victims but there are 9 million people in Michigan. So basically every taxpayer is paying over $500. That's absurd.

There are something like 400 victims. I'm sure it wouldn't take long for me to find a ton of people that would let a pervert due whatever they wanted on them for a million bucks.

Math is hard. Maybe you are one of the people that Apple puts a calculator on their phones for?

Luv2Run wrote:

here are some insights wrote:

Heard an interview of a MSU administrator yesterday. Little or any will come from taxpayers. They'll get the funds from insurance and tuition. So the math thrown out so far is stupid and invalid. Typical reactionary letsrunners.

I heard that as well.

Also, I do not appreciate someone changing the title of my original post.

They did it to make you look less stupid.

I was shocked at how much money MSU is paying up.

Obviously the victims deserve to be compensated but I couldn't believe the school agreed to $500 million.

I think it hints at a principal-agent problem and shows how school tuition can keep going up so much. Administrators can agree to spend money that isn't there's pretty easily. Taxpayers and students will have to pay for it.

A few questions.

1) Can the insurance company object to the settlement?

2) Can individual victims object to the settlement?

I forgot question #3.

Who determines what percentage the lawyers get? How about a flat fee per hour spent on the case?

Not sure why they deserve $150 million. They sufferered nothing.

here are some insights wrote:

Heard an interview of a MSU administrator yesterday. Little or any will come from taxpayers. They'll get the funds from insurance and tuition. So the math thrown out so far is stupid and invalid. Typical reactionary letsrunners.

Tuition? Who do you think pays tuition? It's MIchigan taxpayers. This is a horrible situation but I can see someone being upset that a current 17 year old who wasn't even at Michigan State is now going to have to shell out $10k to this monster.

There is no such thing as free money. It's a public institution.

depends......... wrote:

Imagine every single one of them being a rape victim at Michigan State. That's how large this is.

I don't believe a single one was a rape victim. The vast majority were given some weird massage which is apparently a medical thing but he did it without gloves. The vast majority may have felt uncomfortable but didn't realize it was sexual assault until everyone else got up in arms about it. A million is way too much. Way too much.

longtime supporter wrote:

Changing titles of other peoples' posts is not okay with me. C'mon LRC stop doing this.

definitely this - especially when it's misleading as all get out!

*stupidmods*