National Food Stores, Inc. v. Utley, 16957.

• Decision Date: 07 June 1962
• Docket Number: No. 16957.,16957.
• Citation: 303 F.2d 284
• Parties: NATIONAL FOOD STORES, INC., Appellant, v. William C. UTLEY, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

303 F.2d 284 (1962)

NATIONAL FOOD STORES, INC., Appellant, v. William C. UTLEY, Appellee.

No. 16957.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

June 7, 1962.

John B. Mack of Clifton, Mack & Kirkpatrick, Memphis, Tenn., for appellant, and Abner McGehee, of Cockrill, Laser, & McGehee, Little Rock, Ark., on the brief.

E. L. McHaney, Jr., Little Rock, Ark., for appellee.

Before SANBORN, BLACKMUN and RIDGE, Circuit Judges.

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment for $10,000 in favor of the plaintiff (appellee), based upon the verdict of a jury in a diversity action brought to recover damages, both compensatory and punitive, from the defendant (appellant) for false imprisonment alleged to have been brought about on August 8, 1960, in the city of North Little Rock, in willful disregard of the rights of the plaintiff, by Raymond Cash, the manager of the defendant's store at Pike Plaza Shopping Center in that city.

This case grew out of the arrest, and incarceration in the City Jail in North Little Rock, of the plaintiff, who was a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, and a salesman for E. L. Bruce Company. While on business in the city of North Little Rock, he was mistakenly identified by the manager of the defendant's North Little Rock store as a man who had recently cashed some worthless checks at the store. This resulted in the plaintiff's being arrested, being objectionably interrogated by the police, and being kept incommunicado overnight in a filthy, roach-infested jail.

The controverted issues of fact, which were tried, are concisely stated in the instructions of the trial court to the jury as follows:

"Members of the Jury, as you have gathered from what has transpired in the course of the trial up to this time, it is the theory of the plaintiff that on the afternoon of August 8, 1960, the defendant, acting through its North Little Rock store manager, one Raymond Cash, procured the alleged unlawful arrest and imprisonment of the plaintiff by members of the Police Department of the City of North Little Rock, and that plaintiff was unlawfully imprisoned and confined overnight in the North Little Rock City Jail, which alleged unlawful arrest and imprisonment is said to have damaged the plaintiff. The plaintiff seeks to recover compensation for the actual damages which he claims to have sustained as a result of the alleged wrongful act of defendant\'s employee Cash, and, in addition, plaintiff contends that the acts of said employee were of such a character and quality that in addition to making an award for actual or compensatory damages, you should make a further award of what is known as punitive or exemplary damages, which are damages which may be awarded in a proper case by way of punishment for wrongdoing or as an example to others.

"The defendant has filed an answer in the case in which it denies that it is liable to the plaintiff in any sum whatever, and in which it denies that it is in any event liable to plaintiff for punitive damages. In this connection the defendant admits that on the occasion in question its store manager, Mr. Cash, while acting within the scope of his employment observed the plaintiff and thought that he was one McCreary who was known or suspected to have defrauded defendant by means of a certain check or checks, and that Cash telephoned

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