20 New Plaintiffs in MSU Gymnastics Sexual Assault Case
An additional 20 plaintiffs have signed onto the suit against Dr. Larry Nassar, MSU, US Gymnastics, and a local E. Lansing gymnastics clubs. The allegations are sickeningly familiar, but the sheer numbers are new.
As a (hopefully unnecessary reminder), there is nothing to celebrate here. Just an awful lot of apparent damage that - according to the complaint - could have been avoided if institutions had reported as morally and/or legally required.
“This appears to be one of the largest sexual abuse scandals in the history of amateur athletics,” one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Stephen Drew, said in a statement Thursday. ...
“The women who are a part of this litigation seek institutional reform and accountability,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Adam Sturdivant said in a statement. “They do not want anything like this to ever happen again. They want to protect the next generation of athletes, and they want those who shared in the decisions and who were responsible for the lack of oversight which permitted these acts to occur to be held accountable.”
... Simultaneously, MSU police are investigating more than 90 complaints.
I don't mean to joke too much about this, because it's really not funny, but how many plaintiffs does it take to make a lawsuit a class action suit? Has there ever been a class action sexual assault lawsuit, or does that term really only apply to product-harm or tort cases?
There's no minimum but you need a large number to have your case certified by a judge.
This is right - but you need commonality of the legal questions, a "typical" lead plaintiff, and that lead plaintiff needs to "adequately" represent the class.
That gets a bit tougher when you have multiple institutions violating their different internal policies, some defendants violating their legal "must report" obligations, and Larry Nassar doing different things with different frequency to the gymnasts. Allegedly.
I think there will be a lot of factual differences in the stories these plaintiffs have to tell.
March 17th, 2017 at 11:11 AM ^
See the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 (a) and (b).
As far as numerosity goes, there isn't a specific number. It usually hinges on the complexity of each individual case. Sexual assault is very fact-specific, so it might be difficult to find enough cases that are substantially similar to earn class certification. But some of these mass tort wannabes are certainly drooling at the possible settlement -- that's for sure.
Nothing surprises me anymore from Michigan State. Nothing.
and anyone that was complicit in this shit?
Of course we can. This is America! And our Founding Fathers fought hard for the right to shoot anyone at anytime for any reason whatsoever! Or something like that...
Heads will roll in East Lansing.
I know a lot of this happened before his time, but at this point I have to wonder whether Hollis will survive this scandal with his job intact. There will be an immense amount of public pressure to clean house with the Athletic Department.
Given the their President's comments and their history with sexual assault I believe this will happen. Or at least attempted. I see nothing contrite about the MSU response so far.
March 16th, 2017 at 11:30 PM ^
That this will turn out to be much worse than either Penn State or Baylor.
WTF?
(I.e., Why's This Funny? It seems decidedly unfunny to me.)
is how long it took for all this to come out, given the sheer number of victims. I'd have thought that just by chance somebody would have made a stink big enough to break the story long ago.
For kids of my generation who grew up in the '50s and '60s, it would have been understandable for them to keep quiet since there was almost no public acknowledgement of molestation; I can't remember my own parents even once talking to me about it. Thank God I never came to grief that way.
But for kids that Nassar molested, they've grown up with "show me on the doll where the bad man touched you" as part of their upbringing. How that didn't result in numerous calls if not lawsuits from enraged parents is puzzling.
I just hope this loser/monster of a human being gets what he deserves. As a father of two daughters, I will celebrate the day he gets his.
Nassar puts the sue into MSU . .
I hate to say it, as bad as things are I'm guessing that things are going to get worse before they get better. Talking to my friend who works for the state police in Lansing, evidently they talked to the folks who investigated the Sandusky stuff at penn state. I don't think these will be the last 20 to add their names to this list. The whole situation is sickening.
to have another female present when a male doctor was examining/treating a female patient, especially a minor. Guess not, but that would be a good reform going forward.
March 16th, 2017 at 10:00 PM ^
where Nassar ordered a nurse out of the examination room before he began his "procedure." Nurses being deferential to doctors, she complied. I would guess there were plenty of other such incidents. I'm not exonerating or condemning those nurses, but I bet all of them are wracked by guilt.
1 week ago today just before my physical exam's more personal part, she called in her female asst. Unfortunately I was not taken advantage of in spite of their superior numbers. Damn, maybe next year.
I posted it below, but here's the link:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2698378-usa-gymnastics-ceo-steve-pen…
Im sure on a daily basis there will be a crew of so called doctors trying to help him with his back and hip pain....
Sparty NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I Know........I am an insensitive prick... Its been 7 long years of nice clear cut non-spite filled debate w\Sparties that has got me this way.
What's the weather suppose to be like this weekend? I have a sudden urge to Wanna Disc It baby! Oh yeah, I always want to Disc it.....Tired of putting in back yard....
If Stephen Drew said it, it might be hyperbole a tad, but you can trust he is ready to prove it.
Steve and I had many workers' comp cases in GR when we were both young, and learning to be trial lawyers. Great Guy. Also used to play pickup hoop together at downtown Y during lunchtime with, among other notables, members of the GR Ottawa Hills state championship team of 1968 IIRC.
MSU looks to become Baylor of the North, if not surpass it.
Wow.
someone mentioned "just shooting the bastard" which I know was said in jest but frankly with the amount of stuff going on at the hands of coaches, players, and support staff with regards to assaulting young women part of me wonders when do we hit a point a dad with their CCW takes matters into their own hands?
I don't say that jokingly. I'm an educated guy with a blue collar job not some half cocked "billy badass" but seriously could you imagine if this was your daughter? I mean really imagine if this happened to your daughter? If your 17 year old daughter was being "treated" by this guy and this "man" is using it as a chance to get his rocks off probing your young daughter. Think about that.
I know I'm yammering at this point and I do NOT condone violence or vigilante justice but if these allegations prove true you are talking about the deepest, darkest, cesspools of human shit that deserve to rot in hell and I just wonder from a more philisophical standpoint when do we, as humans, take a stand against sexual abuse beyond "let the courts work it out"...or is that simply enough in a civlilzed society?
That is a strong reaction...maybe it's having daughters...I'm not sure.
I don't have a daughter so I guess I can't be sure; but I'd like to think that if my daughter were traumatized, I wouldn't compound her problems by ensuring that her father went to prison.
the head of USA Gymnastics resigned over the lawsuits against Nassar over the lawsuits through his work with USA women's gymnastics.
This whole mess runs deep:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2698378-usa-gymnastics-ceo-steve-pen…
there is an issue in the sport of gymnastics and some of them are not at nassar level and therefore not highly known or reported. There was an issue right here in columbus with an osu cheerleading coach who was also a coach at buckeye gymnastics (elite level club gymnastics with a great repuation) who was forced out due to some pretty vile allegations. Not sure anything legal came of it he just got fired.
OSU head cheerleading coach Lenee Buchman was fired due to her two assistant coaches being involved in some foul stuff. The two assistant coaches were tied to some foul stuff with very young gymnasts at buckeye gymnastics (one being the above I was referencing). This really has nothing to do with OSU it is about the amount of shenanigans going on with young (sometimes very young) women in sports especially in the gymnastics world.
SImple google searches will show literally hundreds of allegations with young gymnasts and cheeleaders all over the country. Pretty scary. I bring this up because from a college gymnastics coach mouth to my ears... "Gymnastics is an incredible sport with incredible people but I'd be hyper aware and hyper cautious if I had a young daughter in the sport".
With this many people coming forward now, it's amazing to think about how it seemed to be kept quiet for this long.
Not criticizing anyone, and I have no idea what its like to be in that position or feel the way those victims do. But based on pure probability, I would've thought that the odds were that at least one person would've decided to come forward. Maybe they were all coerced or threatened into not saying anything. I don't know.
Time will tell, I suppose.