BANISHED SHOPPER AND CAN SUE MALL
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A North Carolina Superior Court judge has ruled
that a shopper could sue a Greensboro,
North Carolina mall for banishing
him for one year after he was accused of concealing dolls at a tenant's department store.
The case rose out of an incident in which a 64-year-old
retired school teacher was shopping on the day after Christmas with his wife with
the intent to buy collector's item dolls.
The store did not provide shopping carts or bags
so the shopper put 11 dolls into his own plastic bag to carry to the cash
register.
The shopper was stopped and detained by store
security.
Greensboro
police charged the shopper with concealing merchandise.
A mall security worker asked him to sign a
document captioned "Notice to Depart and Forbid Entry." This document contained a clause stating that
he could appeal the banishment order by making a request to the mall's general
manager.
Repeated requests by the shopper's lawyer for
information about the appeal procedure was ignored. Further, the management of the mall failed to
even speak with the shopper's lawyer.
The district attorney dropped the criminal
charge in January of 2007 and a district judge expunged the charge from the
shopper's record.
The shopper then sued the mall and claimed that
the mall engaged in "unlawful, negligent, grossly negligent and willful
unwarranted misconduct" when it imposed the one-year ban and failed to
respond to the shopper's request to repeal the ban.
The shopper's lawyer argued that there is an
unwritten contract between the shopping center and the general public by which
the shopping center invites the public in to spend money. The claim was that the mall violated that
contract when they banished the shopper from 180 stores, several acres and the
United States Post Office, without just cause.
The mall moved to dismiss the claim. On March 11, 2008 Superior Court Judge
John H. Holshouser, Jr. denied the motion thereby allowing the case to proceed
to trial.