Rosauers cleared in civil suit
Family claimed girl, 11, was unlawfully detained
It took a Spokane jury about an hour Thursday to decide in favor of Rosauers Supermarkets in a lawsuit brought by a family who claimed their 11-year-old daughter was unlawfully detained by employees of the grocery store chain and was accused of being a prostitute.
The incident occurred on July 3, 2006, at the Rosauers store at 10618 E. Sprague Ave. in Spokane Valley. Both sides agreed that employees briefly detained the girl after she had spoken to two or three older men. But what was said and how store employees reacted resulted in divergent stories.
Russell Van Camp, attorney for the girl, who is related to the area’s well-known Marks family, asked the jury to award her parents $1 million for the girl’s emotional suffering. Or, at the very least, the jury should force the store chain to give the family $100,000 to pay for the girl’s college education, he said.
Van Camp alleged that Rosauers employees falsely imprisoned the girl, whose last name is not Marks, and caused emotional distress. Van Camp also alleged that a store security officer assaulted the girl when he grabbed her and took her upstairs to a security room.
The jury could have awarded damages if they sided with Van Camp on any of those three allegations. It sided with Rosauers in each allegation.
In his closing argument, Rosauers attorney Mick McFarland told the jury the claims were false. Employees never accused the girl of being a prostitute, he said, only that she was eliciting information from men, which the store believed was impermissible conduct.
McFarland said the security officer – a retired police officer – responded after an adult male customer approached a store employee and said he was uncomfortable with a conversation he had had with the girl.
After the security officer approached her, the girl said she was 21, then 18. Only after Spokane Valley police and the girl’s mother arrived did employees learn she was 11. “This case is not and never has been about that (the girl) was prostituting in Rosauers. The reason she was stopped was she was contacting older men and obtaining information,” McFarland said.
Van Camp told the jury that McFarland was using the octopus defense: inject a cloud of ink and scurry into the darkness.
Once employees learned the girl was 11, “they all realized a serious error had been committed here,” Van Camp said. “It was unjustified, with no probable cause to detain her by herself away from her aunt. They didn’t have to take her upstairs by force.”