## Facts

- May Department Stores Company suspected fraudulent charges on A. F. Foster’s store account after confirming with the real Mrs. Foster that no one else was authorized to use the account.
- Mabel Teel accompanied her sister-in-law, Leona Teel (also known as Leona Nesslein), to the store while Leona represented herself as “Mrs. A. F. Foster” and charged merchandise to Foster’s account.
- Store personnel observed transactions and parcel-carrying activity consistent with a coordinated effort to remove goods purchased under the assumed identity.
- A store detective directed Mabel and Leona to the store’s credit office for questioning about the account use and identity.
- After confrontation in the credit office, Mabel and Leona returned to their car and brought the merchandise back; the store recovered its goods.
- Mabel alleged that, after recovery of the merchandise, the detective refused to allow her to leave unless she signed a written “confession” or statement.
- Mabel sued for false arrest and false imprisonment, seeking actual and punitive damages.
- A jury returned a verdict for Mabel for $1,000, and both sides appealed, disputing liability and the adequacy of the verdict.

## Issues

1. Whether the store was privileged to detain Mabel for a reasonable time based on reasonable grounds to investigate suspected fraud and recover merchandise.
2. Whether continued detention after the merchandise was recovered, for the purpose of obtaining a signed confession, could constitute false imprisonment.
3. Whether the jury instructions improperly allowed liability for a period of detention that was privileged as a matter of law, requiring reversal.

## Decision

- The Missouri Supreme Court held the store’s initial detention was justified as a matter of law because the store had reasonable grounds to suspect fraudulent use of the account and could detain briefly to investigate and recover its goods.
- The court held that detention after the goods were recovered, if done to compel a confession rather than to protect property or complete a reasonable investigation, could be unlawful and support a false imprisonment claim.
- The court reversed and remanded for a new trial because the instructions did not clearly confine potential liability to the post-recovery period and risked treating justified detention as actionable.

## Legal Principles

- A merchant has a limited privilege to detain a person for a reasonable time and in a reasonable manner when the merchant has reasonable grounds to suspect theft or fraud affecting the merchant’s property interests.
- The privilege is limited in purpose and duration: it extends to investigation, recovery of property, and related protective steps, not to coercive measures unrelated to those ends.
- False imprisonment consists of intentional confinement without lawful justification and against the person’s will.
- When a portion of the restraint is privileged as a matter of law, jury instructions must separate that period from any later, potentially unprivileged detention so the jury does not impose liability for justified conduct.

## Conclusion

The court recognized a shopkeeper’s privilege to detain on reasonable suspicion to investigate and recover goods, but held that any continued confinement after recovery—when used to compel a confession—may be false imprisonment; because the instructions failed to isolate the privileged initial detention from the later detention, the judgment was reversed and the case remanded for retrial.


Teel v. May Dep’t Stores Co., 348 Mo. 696, 155 S.W.2d 74 (Mo. 1941)