## Facts

- Michael Floeter, a VG’s Food Center employee, saw Darla Padlo and Cassandra Green lingering near the cosmetics section and looking around in a way he found suspicious.
- Floeter testified he saw at least one of the girls put something in her pocket and later heard merchandise being unwrapped as he passed an aisle where the girls were present.
- Floeter saw the girls stop in another aisle and begin unwrapping items; he recovered discarded wrappers the girls had pushed behind displayed products.
- Floeter and employee Lisa Bay observed Padlo positioning herself to block the employees’ view while Green unwrapped and concealed cosmetic items.
- Floeter reported his suspicions to store manager Cheryl Bigham, who then watched the girls and believed she saw them remove cosmetic items from shelves and put them into their pockets.
- Bigham confronted Padlo and Green; both began to cry. Green produced several cosmetic items from her pockets.
- Padlo removed her personal items from her pockets but did not produce any store merchandise.
- Padlo alleged that, after she emptied her pockets, Bigham reached into Padlo’s pockets to check again, without Padlo’s consent.
- Bigham directed the girls to an office elsewhere in the store to wait for police. The office blinds were closed; Bigham and Bay stayed with the girls, and Floeter stood near the doorway.
- When Padlo tried to call her mother on a cell phone, Bigham took the phone away.
- Michigan State Police Trooper Deeann Oswald-DeBottis arrived, took employee statements, and arrested both girls for retail fraud (Padlo as an aider and abettor).
- Padlo was found not guilty at trial and later sued VG and its employees, asserting claims including false imprisonment/false arrest, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and malicious prosecution.
- This decision addressed VG and its employees’ motion for summary judgment (claims against the trooper had been resolved in an earlier summary-judgment ruling).

## Issues

1. Whether VG and its employees could be liable for false imprisonment/false arrest, or whether the detention and involvement of police were justified by probable cause and Michigan’s shopkeeper’s privilege.
2. Whether Padlo could maintain a malicious prosecution claim despite the court’s probable-cause determination for the detention and arrest.
3. Whether the store employees’ conduct (detention in an office, closing blinds, taking Padlo’s phone, calling police) was extreme enough to support an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.
4. Whether Bigham’s alleged act of reaching into Padlo’s pockets constituted assault and battery, and if so, whether VG could be responsible for that conduct.

## Decision

- Summary judgment **granted** to VG, Bigham, Floeter, and Bay on Padlo’s **false imprisonment/false arrest** claim.
- Summary judgment **granted** to the moving defendants on **malicious prosecution**.
- Summary judgment **granted** to the moving defendants on **intentional infliction of emotional distress**.
- Summary judgment **denied** as to **assault and battery** against **Bigham** (and **VG** on vicarious liability), based on the alleged nonconsensual pocket search.
- Summary judgment **granted** to **Floeter and Bay** on **assault and battery** because the record did not show they committed the alleged touching.

## Legal Principles

- On summary judgment, the court views the evidence and reasonable inferences in the nonmovant’s favor, but the nonmovant must present evidence sufficient for a reasonable jury to find for her on each required element.
- Under Michigan law, **false imprisonment** requires an intentional restraint or confinement without lawful authority, against the person’s will, and with awareness of the confinement.
- Michigan recognizes a **shopkeeper’s privilege**: a merchant may detain a person for a reasonable time and in a reasonable manner when the merchant has probable cause (reasonable grounds) to believe retail theft occurred.
- The existence of **probable cause** for the detention/arrest defeats tort theories that require lack of justification, including false imprisonment/false arrest, and also defeats the “absence of probable cause” element of a **malicious prosecution** claim.
- A later **acquittal** does not, by itself, show the earlier absence of probable cause.
- **Intentional infliction of emotional distress** in Michigan requires conduct so extreme and outrageous that it goes beyond all bounds of decency, plus severe emotional distress; routine reporting of suspected theft and a brief detention based on probable cause generally does not meet that standard.
- **Battery** is an intentional, unconsented, offensive touching; **assault** is an act intended to cause (and that does cause) a reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery.
- Even if a merchant may detain a suspected shoplifter, that privilege does not automatically authorize an intrusive physical search of the person; a nonconsensual search can support assault and battery.
- An employer can be liable for an employee’s torts committed within the scope of employment under respondeat superior, allowing the assault-and-battery claim to proceed against VG if the jury finds Bigham committed the tort.

## Conclusion

The court held that the employees’ observations and recovered wrappers supplied probable cause and brought the detention within Michigan’s shopkeeper’s privilege, so Padlo’s false imprisonment/false arrest, malicious prosecution, and emotional-distress claims could not survive summary judgment; however, a jury could still find that the manager’s alleged act of reaching into Padlo’s pockets after she had emptied them was a nonconsensual, offensive touching, so the assault and battery claim proceeded against Bigham and VG (but not the other employees).


Padlo v. VG's Food Center, Inc., 2005 WL 3556245 (2005)