Reputation enforcement can override apology when an offense becomes publicly known.

Evidence

A person who is found to have breached an agreement or engaged in unethical conduct is sometimes ordered to pay punitive damages or a fine in the form of a donation to charity in addition to compensating the other party for his loss. Thus, unlike court awards that, while unpredictable, are at least bounded by expectation damages, arbitration awards have a completely uncertain component. In one case, a dealer falsely accused another dealer of stealing a stone. The accuser subsequently remembered where he had put the stone and apologized to the other dealer. As the incident had become widely known throughout the club, however, the wrongly accused dealer brought an arbitration action against the owner of the stone for impugning his good name. The board ordered the man to make a full public apology and a fifty thousand dollar donation to a Jewish charity. — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 89

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The charity-donation sanction converts reputational harm into a community-level monetary transfer — a distinct enforcement flavor from the sacrificial/ritual payments discussed in ‘On Sacrifice,’ where payment stabilizes hierarchy rather than repairing a breach of honor.
• CANDY: The fifty-thousand-dollar fine to Jewish charity over a false theft accusation — where the accuser had already apologized — is a striking parable about the social weight of reputation.
• XREF: connects to: Factual corrections cannot undo reputational damage once a meme spreads. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 183