Crown Cent. Petroleum Corp. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 26 April 1996
• Citation: 679 So.2d 651
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court
• Parties: CROWN CENTRAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION v. Patricia WILLIAMS, as guardian and next friend of R.W., a minor. Patricia WILLIAMS, as guardian and next friend of R.W., a minor v. CROWN CENTRAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION. 1950306, 1950383.

Page 651

679 So.2d 651

CROWN CENTRAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION v. Patricia WILLIAMS, as guardian and next friend of R.W., a minor.

Patricia WILLIAMS, as guardian and next friend of R.W., a minor v. CROWN CENTRAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION.

1950306, 1950383.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

April 26, 1996.

Rehearing Denied June 21, 1996.

William Anthony Davis III and Jeannie Bugg Walston of Starnes & Atchison, Birmingham, for Crown Central Petroleum Corporation.

Charles M. Thompson of Thompson & Carson, Birmingham, for Patricia Williams.

David Barber, District Atty., Birmingham, for Amicus Curiae District Attorney's Office for the Tenth Judicial Circuit.

Matthew C. McDonald and A. Lynne Wiggins of Miller, Hamilton, Snider & Odom, L.L.C., Mobile, for Amicus Curiae Alabama Retail Association.

HOUSTON, Justice.

The defendant, Crown Central Petroleum Corporation ("Crown"), appeals from a judgment entered on a general jury verdict for the plaintiff, Patricia Williams, as guardian and next friend of her son, R.W., a minor, in this action seeking damages for false imprisonment. (Case No. 1950306.) The plaintiff cross-appeals from the trial court's order requiring a remittitur of $150,000 of the $250,000 jury award. (Case No. 1950383.) We reverse and remand as to case number 1950306; we dismiss case number 1950383.

The evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, shows the following: Late on the evening of September 5, 1992, officers from the Birmingham Police Department were dispatched to a Crown gasoline station/convenience store located on 20th Street in Ensley, to investigate a reported armed robbery. When they arrived at the station, the officers questioned Veronica Maiden, a Crown employee, who told them that two black males had approached the store and that one of them had "crouched down" and stuck the barrel of a handgun up into the store's security drawer and robbed her. (The store itself was locked, in accordance with company policy.) While searching the area for the suspects, the officers were informed by a passerby that two black males matching the suspects' description had gone together down an alley and into a nearby apartment complex. The officers eventually found the two suspects--K.A., age 18, and R.W., age 15, the plaintiff's son. The officers also confiscated a nickel-plated revolver that they believed to belong to K.A. The officers immediately transported K.A. and R.W. to the Crown station, where Maiden positively identified them as being the two males who had approached the store earlier. Maiden specifically identified K.A. as being the one who had threatened her with the gun. Maiden, according to the officers on the scene and the station's manager, Pat Sullivan, appeared to be very distraught. Maiden quit her job that night, stating that "she couldn't work in that environment." After obtaining the positive identification from Maiden, the officers took K.A. and R.W. into custody. M.A. Wallace, a detective with the Birmingham Police Department, later charged them both with robbery; R.W. was transported to a Jefferson County juvenile detention facility, where one of the arresting officers filed a complaint against him. Two days later, Detective Wallace filed a petition in the Family Court of Jefferson County, seeking to have R.W. adjudged a delinquent. However, because Maiden never appeared in court to testify, the delinquency petition was ultimately dismissed for want of prosecution.

Ms. Williams sued, alleging that Maiden had caused her son to be falsely detained and arrested and seeking both compensatory and punitive damages from Crown under the doctrine of respondeat superior. The trial court denied Crown's motions for a directed verdict and submitted the case to the jury. After the jury had returned a verdict for the plaintiff, the court denied Crown's motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The dispositive issue is whether the trial court erred in refusing to enter a judgment for Crown as a matter of law. ¹

False imprisonment consists of the unlawful detention of the person of another for any length of time whereby he is deprived of his personal liberty. Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-170. For there to be a false imprisonment, there must be some direct restraint of the person; however, it is not necessary that there be confinement in a jail or a prison. Any exercise of force, or the express or implied threat of force, by which in fact the other person is deprived of his liberty, compelled to remain where he does not wish to remain, or to go where he does not wish to go, is an imprisonment. An employer may be held legally liable for a false imprisonment committed by one of its employees while acting within the line and scope of his employment. Big B, Inc. v. Cottingham, 634 So.2d 999 (Ala.1993).

Crown contends that its former employee, Maiden, did nothing more than report the commission of a crime to the police and then identify the plaintiff's son as having been in the company of an armed robber. According to Crown, the investigating officers took this information and used it, along with other information, to form the basis for their decision to detain and prosecute R.W. as an accomplice in the alleged robbery. Crown argues that under these facts, the plaintiff had no basis for a false imprisonment claim. The plaintiff contends that Maiden's account of the events of September 5, 1992, was just a hoax. The plaintiff maintains that Maiden stole money from Crown and made up the robbery story in order to hide her stealing. The plaintiff argues that Crown was liable for false imprisonment because, she says, Maiden, by a false identification, unlawfully caused the investigating officers to detain and arrest her son for robbery.

After carefully examining the record and the briefs, we conclude that Crown was entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. The undisputed evidence indicates that neither Maiden nor any other employee or agent of Crown detained R.W. or expressly directed that he be detained or arrested. To the contrary, all of the evidence indicates that Maiden was locked inside the store at the time of the incident and that K.A. and R.W. were never restrained from leaving the premises. Moreover, after identifying R.W., Maiden did not participate further in his arrest and prosecution. We recognize, as the plaintiff contends, that persons other than those who actually effect an arrest or imprisonment may be so involved with or related to the act or proceeding as instigators or participants therein as to be liable for false imprisonment. See Wofford Oil Co. v. Stauter, 26 Ala.App. 112, 154 So. 124 (1934); Bank of Cottonwood v. Hood, 227 Ala. 237, 149 So. 676 (1933); J.J. Newberry Co. v. Smith, 227 Ala. 234, 236, 149 So. 669, 671 (1933) ("[a] party may be guilty of false imprisonment in procuring an unlawful arrest by a police officer acting solely as a public officer, as where such party voluntarily aids and abets the officer; or by false charges induces the officer to make an arrest, though the officer may act in entire good faith"); Caldwell v. Standard Oil Co., 220 Ala. 227, 124 So. 512 (1929); United States Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Co. v. Henderson, 22 Ala.App. 448, 116 So. 915 (1928); Clifton v. Grayson, 2 Stew. 412 (Ala.1830); 32 Am.Jur.2d False Imprisonment § 42, 44, 45 (1982). See, also, Casino Restaurant, Inc. v. McWhorter, 35 Ala.App. 332, 46 So.2d 582 (1950). However, it is well settled that liability for false imprisonment, like liability for malicious prosecution, cannot be predicated merely on a person's good faith act of giving information to a police officer tending to show that a crime has been committed or on a person's good faith act of identifying one suspected of a crime, for such involvement in another's detention or arrest is not regarded in the law as an instigation of or participation in the detention or arrest. See 32 Am.Jur.2d, False Imprisonment, § 45. In Wofford Oil Co. v. Stauter, 26 Ala.App. at 114, 154 So. at 126, the Court of Appeals noted the general rule:

"If [the defendant's agent] merely reported to the police officers what he had seen and the arrest and imprisonment of plaintiff followed from an investigation subsequently made by the officers, the act complained of would be the act of the officers and not of [the agent], although [the agent] had furnished the information leading to the investigation and arrest. On this question, however, there was ... evidence tending to prove that [the agent] directed the arrest."

In Caldwell v. Standard Oil Co., 220 Ala. at 228-29, 124 So. at 513, this Court discussed the good-faith aspect of a person's actions in reporting a crime and drew an analogy between false imprisonment cases and malicious prosecution cases:

"To the count for false imprisonment the rule is applicable that, when an officer arrests a person as a result of instructions from another, such arrest is in law effected by him who gave the instruction. [Southern Ry.] v. Beaty, 212 Ala. 608, 103 So. 658 [ (1925) ]; 25 Corpus Juris, 469; Standard Oil Co. v. Davis, 208 Ala. 565, 94 So. 754 [ (1922) ].

"The fact, therefore, that the officer when he arrested plaintiff without a warrant had 'reasonable cause to believe' ( § 3263, Code) that plaintiff was guilty of a felony, by reason of the statements of McNeal [the defendant's agent], under the direction or authority of Jones [the defendant's agent], would not justify the latter, unless they also had 'reasonable cause to believe.' This term in the law of false imprisonment is of like import to 'probable cause' in the law of malicious prosecution. Union Indemnity Co. v. Webster, [218 Ala. 468, 118 So. 794 (1928) ]. So that, upon the same process of reasoning, the discharge of plaintiff in the criminal case on preliminary trial is prima facie evidence of the fact that McNeal and Jones were without 'reasonable cause to believe' that he had committed a felony, and therefore the arrest of pl...