Short story is that state laws around the USA allow retailers to pursue civil restitution against <suspected> shoplifters, even in cases where no legal case was brought.
As a random example lets say you buy a soda at the pharmacy and then enter a grocery store drinking it, you are detained but produce a receipt and the cops decline to charge you. You can still be pursued for civil damages by the store, or refuse and you can hire a lawyer to defend the civil suit and win( a Pyrrhic victory at best).
Seems it is in the store’s interest to randomly and baselessly accuse loads of people of shoplifting so they can then pursue them for damages, knowing it would be in the person’s best interest to just pay the settlement rather than defend the civil case. This could become a money making venture.
Read the article, state laws lay out how much monetary reward can be demanded and it is far above the actual price of the merchandise. It varies by state but it is usually at least three times the cost of the merchandise, or a minimum amount such as $250.
Also the article contains testimony delivered in court from various retail loss prevention employees that reveal that they not only have not gone on to sue anyone, they never intended to in the first place.
I’m suggesting that businesses and people should not be allowed to threaten to sue you, while never intending to follow through for a crime you didn’t commit just to extract money from you.
Basically as the situation exists now merely being accused of shoplifting is enough to get you a settlement letter.
You can sue anyone for any thing at any time, on any grounds. You will find at least one person around every larger courthouse who has thousands of petty suits filed against every thing in sight. You can spot them if, in any open court setting, the judge visibly sighs when they see them.
Fortunately, as bent and screwed up as our justice system is, the barriers against nuisance and unwarranted suits are sturdy enough that there’s no continuing profit in pursuing such things. A store that tried to extort settlement fees on anything like the basis you posit would quickly find itself smothered in counter-suits and/or a class action.
Free money isn’t in their interest? Read the article it lays out that the store never really intends to sue anyone and never did because of the cost involved. Also because they never go to court they can never be sanctioned by the court for being a vexatious litigant.
It follows this pattern.
1.You are accused of theft, it doesn’t matter whether police choose to charge you or not.
2.Receive letter offering you the chance to pay $250 dollars to avoid a lawsuit, which will never be brought.
3.You wisely laugh it off, then stop laughing when your credit report has a negative mark for non-payment. Justice?
They never bring suit, and never intend to as it wouldn’t be profitable. The money is in threatening to, and then dinging the person’s credit rating when they refuse to pay. The person pays up to avoid the suit and/or to clear up their credit history.
I propose lawyers being disciplined by state boards for asking for settlement on a case they and their clients have no intention of bringing to civil court. If they ask for settlement it had better be for a damage worth bringing to suit, this would avoid this kind of nuisance extortion.
There would/will of course be some shitty retailer who thinks this is a great idea, and may even succeed to some small degree if they target powerless people who may take the claim at face value or have reason to fear going to authorities. But it will not persist long before they poke the wrong guy’s shoulder and it blows up in their face.
The law is full of these apparent gotcha rules that, if interpreted in a vacuum, seem like a license to start bashing baby seals. While our legal system sucks, it’s not a vacuum. There is much precedent for people to resist, effectively and with truly nasty comebacks for the retailer.
Several years ago I got hit by what was apparently a legal scam with magazine subscriptions. I began receiving some magazines out of the blue, and had no idea how it happened. After several months, I got a bill for the subscription, which I refused to pay. I got some letters, and then a phone call from a lawyer who threatened to take me to court over it. The last communication ended with “We will take you to court. Don’t think for a minute that we will drop this!”. I told him to go fuck himself, no lawyer is going to court over 19 bucks. :rolleyes: Never heard from him again.
I assume they are targeting people who will think paying is the easier path.
IANAL, but I don’t think you owe anyone money just because you turned down a settlement offer. So I don’t see how they can ding your credit report.
I have been the victim of the same scam that pullin mentions, although in my case it was books. Same pattern - books I didn’t order, followed by bills that I ignored, followed by a call by some clown demanding payment. I told him that I disputed the debt, and that I wasn’t going to give him a cent until he sent me a copy of the signed contract in which I agreed to pay for the books (he didn’t have any such contract). He hung up on me and that was the end of it.
If some retailer threatens to tell the credit bureaus that I stole something, and has no police report or signed statement from me to prove it, there is such a thing as “defamation of credit history”.
If they aren’t actually ever going to carry through and sue anyone, I fail to see the problem. Don’t respond, just ignore it.
If your landlord arrives at your door tomorrow and threatens to toss you out next day, unless you pay up $100 for some made up reason, or other, and you pay, out of ignorance or fear. It’s all on you if you pay up without bothering to look into it and discover he cannot do any such thing.
Same with what you’re saying. If people are too stupid or ignorant to understand he cannot do any such thing, (and by your own admission won’t follow through on the threat), and so just pay up, that’s on them. They should get smarter.
I don’t see how this differs much from any other scam. The foolish will get taken in and the rest will not.
A civil demand for a soda, let’s assume it is $250.00, as you say, small claims court has jurisdiction. The BURDEN OF PROOF of THEFT is still on the company, and the fact the police refused to charge is a legal point in favor of the defendant.
The BoP of theft is not erased, let them prove he stole the soda. IF the facts are so clear it is a complaint without legal merit, the company and or attorney will be, or should be sanctioned. If it happened to me, and the proof was so lacking before suit, and I refused to pay and they still sued me, I would hire an attorney to remove the case to Regular court and countersue for Abuse of Proceess.
I doubt a 250 demand would be filed in regular court in the 1st place?
Where do you find support for your step 3? If retailers were following your step 3, they would end up losing money.
Also, part of the reason that the retailers won’t sue is that the statute that allows them to sue civilly for theft might contain a loser pays provision.
And for that matter, why would anyone shop at a store where they know they could be randomly shaken down every time they step inside? Don’t say they wouldn’t find out, because they would.
Any store that made a habit of randomly and falsely accusing people of shoplifting and attempting to extort money from them would soon find itself out of business, and probably facing false arrest charges if they were pulling innocent people into the security office. At the store I work at, our LP personnel can’t so much as lay a hand on a shoplifter unless they watch them, in real time, pick the item off the shelf and then maintain line of sight on them the entire time they move through the store and then head for the exit without paying, because if they detained someone who hadn’t done anything wrong we could be sued. From time to time they have to let guilty people walk with the merchandise because there’s a possibility that they put the item back on a shelf while nobody was watching, and the risk of a false arrest lawsuit isn’t worth $200 + the price of the item, which is what our state allows us to seek in civil damages.
The State of Washington raised its limits in 2009 - a store can now seek up to $650 above the cost of the merchandise, whether or not the merchandise is resellable. See RCW 4.24.230 .