ELIZABETH, N.J.–In a ruling that also provides comfort for credit unions, a court here has ruled that TD Bank was not liable for damages after an employee's mistaken identification of a customer caused that person emotional distress and other harm.
Three judges in the Superior Court of New Jersey here dismissed the plaintiff's complaint that had alleged claims of negligence, false imprisonment, assault and violation of the Law Against Discrimination (LAD).
The Union Township Police Department was also a defendant in the suit.
The plaintiff had contended that the judge erred in deciding as a matter of law that defendant did not breach the duty owed by a business owner to its customers to maintain reasonably safe premises or the duty to exercise reasonable care in the supervision of its employees.
“Contrary to plaintiff's assertion, the facts are essentially undisputed,” the court ruled. “Plaintiff, a fifty-nine-year-old African-American male, was wearing a striped collared shirt, black jacket, and grey baseball cap when he entered defendant's Union Township branch to make a withdrawal. Surveillance video shows a second African-American man, wearing white coveralls and a hardhat, entered the bank, stood near plaintiff, who thought the man was also completing a withdrawal slip, and approached the teller immediately ahead of plaintiff. This man handed the teller a slip, at which point the teller handed the man a stack of bills, and the man walked out of the bank. Plaintiff advanced to the counter; however, unbeknownst to him, the other man had handed the teller a note saying, "[b]ig bills please this is a hold up."
“While plaintiff was standing before the teller, another bank employee exited the break room, saw the note and discerned that it said something ‘in reference to a robbery’,” the judges’ ruling continues. “She walked back to her desk and called 9-1-1. Under the misimpression that plaintiff was the robber, she told police the robber, an African-American man, was still in the bank. While she was on the phone with the operator, two employees locked the bank's doors. Meanwhile, in this commotion, plaintiff took a seat in the bank's lobby area.
“Critical to plaintiff's common law negligence claim was the employee's admitted departure from defendant's policy regarding procedures to be followed in the event of a robbery,” the ruling states. “The employee handbook provided: ‘FOLLOWING A ROBBERY only AFTER the Robber has left . . . Call Police to Report Robbery.’ Within four minutes of the 9-1-1 call, police arrived and defendant's employees unlocked the doors. Although plaintiff testified at deposition that police had ‘their guns pointed towards’ him when they were ‘outside,’ the video shows their guns were not drawn when they entered the bank. Police asked defendant which way the robber went and plaintiff responded, ‘[h]e went that way,’ pointing with his left arm.
“Union Township Police Officer, Teon Freeman, testified at deposition that he never arrested plaintiff, but interviewed him as a witness. Plaintiff remained calm during the interview and provided information about the suspect, leading Freeman to believe plaintiff ‘knew he wasn't under arrest.’”
The appellate judges found the trial judge had ruled correctly that there was no negligence on the part of the bank or the police department.