nanushka

I note that you say three different things here about your interpretation of their words: (1) that it's "clearly" the right one; (2) that it's "just as likely" the right one; and (3) that it's "more likely" the right one. I find (2) barely plausible, but I can understand thinking that. (1) and (3) seem to me to be completely unsupported at this point. Also, just because one is joking about rape doesn't mean one is "plotting rape." That's an exaggeration of how others are reading the quotation, I think.

Did these women really say in their posts "that nothing was wrong"? That's not how I read their words. It's very possible to express love for and loyalty to and gratitude toward an organization (or a family, or a school, or a community, or any other complex social group) while still recognizing that there are problems there — even very serious problems that one would like to see remedied. I would imagine many of us could relate to the experience of having such complex feelings about groups to which we belong.

It does sound farfetched. Is that what Waterbury is doing? Trying to "bring down" NYCB?

The first and third week casting sheets seem to have been missing from the website all day — or, at least, the links on the "Casting" page haven't been working for me. (Week two has been there.) I get a page that says, "Sorry, the page you requested cannot be found."

No problem, sorry for the confusion. I certainly don’t, but as I understand the process such evidence would typically not be presented until the discovery phase. I assume Waterbury has a lot of evidence — though perhaps not sufficient to support every claim. We’ll see (on not).

I fail to see how any of that is relevant to the question of whether (as you asserted) “the lawsuit was written deliberately to invoke [evoke] this exact response” — i.e. the confusion of “student” and “former student.” Also, for (1) and (2) the company may well have had a heads up that the lawsuit/changes were coming, thus provoking their action. Your argument relies on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy.

And you may be right. My point was that you’ve as yet offered no real evidence to accompany your argument, making it a mere assertion.

If it is misconstrued, that's hardly proof that... As @Helene points out, the use of the phrase is pretty clear in context. The lawyer can hardly be blamed if people misread — and even if he should've been clearer, that doesn't mean his failure to be so was ill-intentioned.

Yes, everyone — including pornographic film actors!

I'd think it would go without saying that not everyone is going to do everything they can get away with — especially when we're talking about actions that many would agree are reprehensible.

How can we judge whether the argument is specious without access to the evidence (which has not yet been presented)? ETA: To clarify, I believe the "bad acts" Waterbury accuses NYCB of knowing about and condoning are not (or not only) the acts committed directly against her. The company is accused of having known about and condoned much other behavior that, she claims, created an environment in which they felt they could do to her as they allegedly did. That argument doesn't depend on NYCB having seen or known about the specific text messages, etc. that are referred to in the case.

This is how I read it as well. I don't recall anything from the complaint that suggests that, as @On Pointe puts it, "the company has a duty to monitor [its employees'] thoughts, communications and activities."

Maybe, but not necessarily. I don’t know who his employer is, and it would depend on whether that employer has a habit of improperly tolerating abusive behavior that it is aware of or should be aware of. That’s what would make it “systemic,” and that’s what Waterbury seems to be alleging of NYCB. There are indeed cases of individual “bad apples,” much as that phrase gets abused. It’s possible that, at his workplace, Hall is such an individual. ETA: I don’t think Waterbury’s claim is that NYCB should have monitored the private behavior of all its employees. I think her claim is that they knew bad stuff was going on and had a habit of overlooking it. Again, that’s what made it allegedly a “systemic” problem.

Waterbury's complaint does not seem to be primarily that NYCB failed to protect its dancers from every possible threat coming from inside or outside the company; it seems to be primarily that NYCB failed to stop (some of) its dancers from transgressing appropriate norms of behavior and from violating the rights of their colleagues and of other vulnerable individuals. In other words, NYCB (according to Waterbury) has a systemic issue because it allowed (some of) its dancers to get away with bad behavior. The appropriate parallel, it seems to me, would be if ABT implicitly or explicitly tolerated improper and harmful behavior by some of its dancers — not if ABT failed to protect its dancers from every possible threat. It seems more reasonable to me to criticize an institution for doing the former than for doing the latter.

Personally, if I were changing in front of one or more people I generally feel the perfectly comfortable changing in front of, and if I discovered I had been surreptitiously photographed in that situation and that the photos had been shared with others, I would consider that a violation of my trust and autonomy in an intimate situation.