Would we really say that Weinstein's company's directors didn't approve of his pattern of sexual misconduct?

This, strictly speaking, isn't really a contract case, although there is an employment contract at issue so I guess that's how it got caught in my filter. But I read it and thought that this case is raising important enough issues that we should be discussing them. 

The case is David v. The Weinstein Company LLC, 18-cv-5414 (RA), out of the Southern District of New York, and it's a case centering around the alleged sexual assault perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein on the plaintiff. The story the plaintiff tells is a familiar one to those who have read the Weinstein reporting, that "Weinstein asked her to meet him in his hotel room to discuss potential acting roles, and then, on one occasion, forcibly raped her." This decision isn't so much about Weinstein's conduct, though, as it is about the former directors of Weinstein's companies, who the plaintiff contends "enabled Weinstein's sexual misconduct, making them liable for general negligence and negligent retention or supervision." 

The court dismisses the claims against the directors, and the reasons why were what caught my eye about this case. Plaintiff's allegations were that the directors were aware of Weinstein's harassing behavior toward women, based on a number of things: a written communication within the company calling his behavior a "serial problem" the company had to deal with; the characterization by a company executive of Weinstein's female assistants as "honeypot[s]" to lure actresses into meetings with Weinstein; a formal complaint by an employee about Weinstein's behavior; an employee memo summarizing two years' worth of allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct by Weinstein and characterizing the company as a "toxic environment for women"; the settlement of many sexual misconduct claims against Weinstein; and at least one police investigation into Weinstein's behavior. 

None of the allegations established negligence on the part of the directors, according to the court. First of all, the directors did not owe the plaintiff a duty of care, and there is no case law that directors of a company can be held liable for an employee's tortious act. The plaintiff pointed to the fact that the directors renewed Weinstein's contract in 2015 with a provision that prevented Weinstein from being fired for sexual misconduct as evidence that they were enabling Weinstein's conduct, but the court found that this was "a far cry from them approving of Weinstein's sexual assault." While the court admitted that the directors "were not without moral culpability," their actions were not negligence as a legal matter. 

Nor did the plaintiff assert a claim for negligent retention or supervision. The plaintiff did not show that Weinstein's sexual assault took place on the company's premises, since she asserted it happened at a hotel not affiliated with the directors. While the plaintiff argued that Weinstein used company credit cards to pay to the hotel room and lured her to the hotel room under the guise of a business meeting regarding employment by the company, that was regarding the company, not the directors sued here. 

As a matter of law, the court's reasoning makes sense.

As a matter of recognition of how oppressive power structures work, this decision is terrible.

When I learned negligence way back in law school, I remember so many discussions about the policy behind it, about not wanting to hold people to a generalized duty to protect everyone on the planet, about how we decide proximate causation, about how it's really at heart about what we want to hold people liable for and what we don't. 

So this decision makes sense in terms of worrying about generalized duties, of not dismissing the culpability of those committing the intentional tortious act. But it doesn't make sense in terms of thinking about the type of society we want to live in. The Weinstein reporting tells a story of serial abuse that was systemically protected for years by the power structure around Weinstein. To say that nobody else in the power structure was sexually assaulting women is a true statement of legal fact, but also seems disingenuous at this point. Weinstein's abuse was so widespread and lasted so long not only because of Weinstein but also because of the entire operation around him deflecting culpability for it. 

The negligence analysis in this case feels like it's operating in a vacuum, which is kind of how we teach our students to think, presenting them with discrete hypotheticals, but might not be the best or most effective way to set up a fair legal system that protects the most vulnerable and least powerful in society. The societal discussion about the oppressive system that permitted Weinstein (and others) to perpetrate so much abuse has just begun, and maybe we should include how the legal system interacts with those power structures in the discussion. If negligence is all about policy decisions about who you need to protect and how much, then maybe we should have a policy discussion about how to make those decisions, especially if we're making them in the context of an abusive pattern that might be obscured by looking at things in isolation.  

The plaintiff's allegations in this case contain many damning examples that many people around Weinstein knew about the disturbing pattern of sexual misconduct, and made affirmative choices to find ways to use the power structure to protect Weinstein. I appreciate the court's statement that the directors might be morally culpable but not legally culpable, and I recognize that law and morals are two different things. But I don't know that I agree that the director's actions are "a far cry from them approving of Weinstein's sexual assault . . . ." Given the allegations about what the directors knew and how they reacted to that knowledge, I think we could read their actions as indicating that they were a far cry from disapproving of Weinstein's sexual assault.