Coffee Shop Owner Wins $4 Million Judgment Against Boise State University

A coffee shop owner in Boise, Idaho just won a $4 million judgment against 
Boise State University. She had claimed that the school forced her to 
close the shop after a controversy erupted over her support for police. 

Sarah Fendley opened Big City Coffee on the campus of Boise State in 2020. 
In the window of her store was a small "thin blue line" sticker to 
symbolize her support for police officers. Students noticed the sticker 
and one wrote a message on her Snapchat account asking fellow students not 
to visit. Fendley was sent a copy of the message and decided to address it 
directly on social media.

“I remember feeling defeated,” Fendley testified on Thursday. “I said, 
‘OK, I’m going to address it.’ I always address these things when they 
come up.”

In her post, Fendley talked about what the thin blue line means to her and 
shared details about the shooting that left Holtry paralyzed. She even 
attached a photo of him.

The post came up the following morning, on Oct. 22, 2020, in a class Boise 
State President Marlene Tromp was teaching. While Fendley had cropped the 
screenshot to not include the student’s name, Duke said some students were 
concerned about possible doxxing...

Kevin Holtry is a former Boise PD officer who was paralyzed from the waist 
down in 2016 when he was shot by a suspect in a gunfight. In 2017, Fendley 
and Holtry were engaged. It's not clear from the story if they ever got 
married but Fendley raised the story to explain one of the reasons why she 
supported the police.

As for the doxxing claim, there was never anything to that from what I can 
tell. One thing about student activists is that they lie a lot, especially 
in an effort to make themselves look like victims.

In any case, Fendley's response created a firestorm on campus and she was 
called into a meeting with a bunch of university administrators. Part of 
that conversation was apparently recorded by one of the administrators, 
but not the conclusion of it. So the lawyers for each side told different 
stories about how the meeting ended. 

Fendley claimed the university terminated her contract because of her 
support for police, a move her lawyer said clearly violated her free 
speech rights. Hours before the meeting started, administrators were 
working on a press release about the business leaving campus, Fendley’s 
attorney Michael Roe said, making it clear they had a single outcome in 
mind.

“Senior administration at BSU caved to a very small number of student 
activists,” Roe told Fox News Digital.

The university and their lawyer claimed they never forced Fendley to close 
but that she made that decision on her own.

On Friday, Estey took the stand as the last witness before closing 
argument. 

"We didn't retaliate against her at all," she said. "She made a choice to 
leave which was her choice to make, there was no retaliation."

What's not in dispute is that four days after the meeting, Big City Coffee 
closed, just months after it opened. Fendley was out tens of thousands of 
dollars she had spent opening the business with no way to earn the money 
back. In 2021 she sued the school for $10 million. Portions of the 
original case were dropped but clearly the jury agreed that the university 
was at fault. Their deliberations only lasted about 3 hours so it seems 
they didn't feel the defense had much of a case.

Fendley was awarded $3 million "for lost business, reputational damage, 
mental and emotional distress and personal humiliation." An additional $1 
million in punitive damages was directed against the school's then vice 
president of student affairs.

This case is very reminiscent of another one that happened in 2016 across 
the street from Oberlin College. Gibson's Bakery was accused of racism 
after stopping a black student who was shoplifting bottles of wine from 
the store. That student eventually pleaded guilty but a woke mob on campus 
decided to punish the store and received assistance from campus 
administrators who also stopped doing business with the bakery. The bakery 
sued and won a large judgment. The school appealed and lost. They were 
eventually ordered to pay Gibson's Bakery $32 million plus interest for a 
total of $36 million.

The Gibson's Bakery case was dragged out by Oberlin for years so it could 
be a while before the Boise State case is finally resolved. Still, it 
sounds as if the jury felt this was a pretty clear case. Hopefully the 
appeals court will accept their judgment.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/09/24/coffee-shop-owner-wins-4-million-
judgment-against-boise-state-university-n3794938