[ql06] TORT: Retail false imprisonment

  • From: "K.K. Campbell" <2kc16@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:03:15 -0500

Classic tort example of a false imprisonment scenario, below.

NOTE: Had discussion with a Crown on weekend and it was agreed that the
criminal court system (the Cop, the Crown, the Court) really doesn't
want retail security bringing people in. I can elaborate if necessary;
makes one question the law itself ( at least on an appellate level),
which could be some kind of defence to it, the failure of the system to
apply it equally, non-arbitrarily.

Ken.

--
If men were angels, there would be no need of government.
          -- James Madison
             (doing his David Hume impersonation)


--- cut here ---


False Imprisonment

LOS ANGELES (City News Service) -- A woman who claims she was wrongly
accused of shoplifting from a JCPenney store in Montebello and locked in
a room by employees while her bag was searched sued the company today
for damages.

Martha Arias, acting as her own attorney, filed the suit in Los Angeles
Superior Court. She is seeking unspecified damages on allegations of
false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

A representative for JCPenney, which has its corporate headquarters in
Dallas, could not be reached today for comment.

Arias says she was "peaceably" shopping along with her mother at the
JCPenney's in the Montebello Town Center last Aug. 26 when, "without
probable cause, a female guard and male guard by threat of force accused
(her) of theft of store property."

Arias claims she was forced to return to the store and that the guards
treated her like a "criminal," which damaged her reputation. Arias works
as a manager in a grocery store near the Montebello mall.

When Arias was brought back to the store, she was "put in a room and the
door was locked ... (and she was) prohibited from speaking with her
mother, who was in distress at witnessing what appeared to be the arrest
of her daughter," the suit states.

Arias claims the guards used "verbal intimidation" while searching her
bag in order to "obtain a false confession."

"After a long search, the guards were unable to find any goods that
belonged to the store and ordered (Arias) to leave," the suit states.

When she was allowed to leave after about an hour and a half, Arias
asked to speak to the manager, who "agreed (Arias) should not have been
detained and had been wrongfully accused," the suit states.


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