WOMAN CLAIMS DAMAGES

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23477, 4 November 1941, Page 8

WOMAN CLAIMS DAMAGES

DETAINED IN STORE BY EMPLOYEES

SUSPECTED OF SHOP-

LIFTING

(P.A.) AUCKLAND. November 3. A woman who alleged that she was detained and searched in a large city store under s'uspicion of shoplifting brought a claim lor £550 damages and costs against the firm before Mr Justice Fair and a jury. "My client,” said Mr Finlay, who appeared for the plaintiff, Mrs Lyla Mavis Blanc, "is seeking at your hands both vindication and compensationvindication because her character has been impunged, and compensation because of the indignity and wrong that was done her by the defendant company.” The action was taken against the Farmers’ Trading Company,. Ltd., for whom Mr J. B. Johnston appeared. The plaintiff alleged that while she was going about her lawful business in the store, servants of the company arrested her, and searched her, and detained her for half an hour on a false charge of shoplifting. They handed her over to the police, who took her to the police station, and afterwards searched her home. The defence denied these allegations, and said the plaintiff had not suffered any damage whatever.

(•Mr Finlay said Mrs Blanc was a regular customer of the Farmers’ Trading Cdmpany, and on April 4 last she was there making a weekly payment, and making some purchases. A woman whom she had seen in the shop before spoke to her, and they went together to the wool counter. Suddenly a hand fell on her shoulder, and she and the woman who had spoken to her were ordered by a shopwalker into the office. There they were made to turn out their bags. Mrs Blanc had a lew sweets she had bought, and a charge that she had stolen them was not pursued. The other woman had some wool in her bag, and she admitted that she had stolen it, and began to cry. The police were summoned, and Mrs Blanc suffered the indignity of being driven away by them to the police station. Being perfectly innocent, she agreed to her house being searched; but nothing was found there. In support of his application that the jury be discharged, Mr Johnston said that plaintiff’s evidence had not justified any reference to anything that happened after the police were called in.

His Honour decided that it would be better in the meantime to follow the usual course, and hear the evidence. Mr Johnston said that the evidence he would submit would show that part only of Mrs Blanc’s story was true. It was only her association with the shoplifter that brought suspicion on her head, and there were facts that fully justified the officers of the company in coming to the conclusion that the two women were working together. His Honour said there was no evidence to be considered by the jury in support of the suggestion that this woman was detained by the police with the authority or at the direction of the company or, indeed, that the detective detained her against her will. The only question was whether she had been unlawfully detained in the company’s office. ' Mr Johnston said that the damage the plaintiff had suffered was nil, and there was no suggestion of any bad faith on the part of the officers of the company. Mr Finlay said there was compelling evidence, both direct and indirect, that Mrs Blanc was detained against her will. His Honour will address the jury to-morrow.