An African-American tax attorney who was held at gunpoint and handcuffed by police officers after a Papa John's employee allegedly accused him of pulling a gun while buying a pizza has won an appeal in the Court of Appeals of Indiana.
Attorney Sanford Kelsey can move ahead to trial with his claims of false imprisonment, defamation, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress against the pizza chain.
Kelsey, who holds an LL.M. degree from Georgetown University Law Center, is a former attorney at Greenberg Traurig and at Indianapolis-based Ice Miller.
He currently works as in-house counsel for a major packing and shipping corporation.
The other plaintiff in the case is Thomas Williams, Kelsey's friend, who is also African-American and was with him at the restaurant when the incident occurred.
The July 11 decision by a three-judge panel overturns a trial court decision that granted summary judgment to Papa John's and employee Kelly Tharp based on a finding that the allegation against Tharp was insufficient to support a claim of defamation, upon which the plaintiffs' other claims relied.
"I'm ready to move forward and continue to practice law," said Kelsey, who is now working in Memphis, Tenn.
The decision stems from a February 2005 incident, when Kelsey and Williams went to a Papa John's in Westfield, Indiana to pick up a pizza they had ordered.
They paid for the pizza with a credit card.
Kelsey, an attorney with the Internal Revenue Service at the time, was visiting Williams while in Indianapolis to interview for a job at a law firm there.
According to the plaintiffs' complaint, the employee, Tharp, falsely reported that the two men had brandished a gun and took money from the cash register. The lower court found that the statement regarding the gun was not specific enough to rise to defamation. It also determined that the complaint was incorrect in alleging that the employee said that they took money from the register.
Even so, the lower court found that the statement left an impression that the two men had committed armed robbery.
In reversing, the appeals court reasoned that Papa John's could have moved to dismiss the claim or demanded a more definitive statement from the plaintiffs' complaint.
"Instead, the trial court granted summary judgment, depriving them of their opportunity to amend," wrote Judge Melissa May, who authored the decision.
Representing Papa John's is Eric D. Johnson, a staff attorney at Kightlinger & Gray in Indianapolis. He declined to comment. Representing Kelsey is Arend J. Abel, a partner with Cohen & Malad in Indianapolis.
According to the appeals court decision, which considered the facts in a light most favorable to Kelsey and Williams, an unmarked police car was waiting for the two men when they arrived at Williams¹ house after picking up their pizza. Several police cars arrived quickly upon their return and surrounded their car. The police ordered them out of their car at gunpoint, ordered them to their knees and handcuffed them. They were detained for about 90 minutes while their family and friends watched. No gun was found.
Tharp had worked at two other Papa John's, where he was previously terminated for theft, rehired under a false name, and rehired again using his father's name, according to the decision.
The appeals court further determined that the lower court erred when it granted summary judgment to Papa John's for claims of abuse of qualified privilege, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring, and punitive damages. Those claims hinged on whether the plaintiffs had sufficiently pleaded the defamation claim.
The lower court judge was Judith S. Proffitt of the Hamilton Circuit Court in Indiana. Concurring in the appeals court decision were judges James S. Kirsch and Patricia A. Riley.
