Opinion ID: 2979686
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: U.S. Bank Defendants

Text: Graves filed numerous state law claims against U.S. Bank and two of its employees, Bowles and Capps, who were present for the robbery. He argues that Bowles’s and Capps’s erroneous identification of him as the bank robber constituted defamation, defamation per se, libel, libel per se, slander, slander per se, negligent false arrest, negligent false imprisonment, and the tort of outrage. The district court granted U.S. Bank, Bowles, and Capps summary judgment on all counts. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, “the public interest requires that expressions of suspicions founded upon facts detailed and prudently made in good faith and as confidentially as circumstances will permit, to aid in detecting felonies do not give rise to an action for slander [or libel] against the person expressing his suspicions.” Dossett v. N.Y. Mining & Mfg. Co., 451 S.W.2d 843, 846 (Ky. 1970) (citation omitted). The Kentucky Supreme Court recognized in Tucker v. No. 10-5346 Graves v. Bowles, et al. Page 9 Kilgore, 388 S.W.2d 112, 114-15 (Ky. 1965), that these expressions are entitled to qualified privilege if they are: made in good faith, without actual malice, with reasonable or probable grounds for believing them to be true, on a subject matter in which the author of the communication has an interest, or in respect to which he has a duty, public, personal, or private, either legal, judicial, political, moral, or social, made to a person having a corresponding interest or duty. Statements made in the course of work or for the enforcement of law warrant this privilege. See Dossett, 451 S.W.2d at 846. Bowles and Capps identified Graves as part of a police investigation into a dangerous crime. They did so based upon their recollection of the robber’s appearance, and without any kind of articulable malice. Therefore, Graves’s various defamation, libel, and slander claims all fail. Furthermore, the rest of his claims against the U.S. Bank Defendants fail as well. It is unclear that Graves has alleged a duty owed to him by the U.S. Bank Defendants, especially in light of the privilege afforded to good faith statements made to law enforcement. However, assuming that the U.S. Bank Defendants did owe him a duty in this situation to not make reckless statements to police, Graves has failed to allege any breach of this duty. The U.S. Bank Defendants identified Graves as the robber in good faith and based on the events they actually witnessed. Therefore, Graves’s negligence claims fail. Additionally, his claim of outrage fails where the U.S. Bank defendants were assisting a police investigation in good faith. See Goodman v. Goldberg & Simpson, P.S.C., 323 S.W.3d 740, 746 (Ky. App. 2009) (explaining that the tort of outrage, also referred to as intentional infliction of emotional distress, requires that the defendant’s intentional or reckless conduct “must be outrageous and intolerable in that it offends against the generally accepted No. 10-5346 Graves v. Bowles, et al. Page 10 standards of decency and morality”). Accordingly, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to the U.S. Bank Defendants.