Court Opinion

ID: 9588481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:34:48.614801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:33.772151
License: Public Domain

Judge Parker
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. In my view the evidence taken in the light most favorable to plaintiff and giving plaintiff the benefit of every reasonable inference to be drawn therefrom does not raise a question of fact for the jury on the issue of probable cause. At the critical time, ie., the moment at which plaintiff was apprehended in defendant’s store, the undisputed evidence was (i) plaintiff had come through the checkout line, (ii) he had in his pocket two packs of cigarettes, (iii) he said he had bought them on an earlier visit, (iv) he produced no receipt, (v) he offered to pay for the cigarettes again and (vi) two security guards said they had seen plaintiff put the cigarettes in his pocket. While plaintiffs statement conflicted with the security guard’s statement, on the issue of probable cause, the only disputed fact before the jury in the civil action was whether the guard had asked plaintiff if he had a receipt. The pertinent inquiry is not whether defendant’s store manager should have believed plaintiff, but rather whether under the circumstances existing at the time the criminal action was instituted, the store manager acted as a person of reasonable prudence in concluding that the crime charged had been committed. The fact that plaintiff was subsequently acquitted in the *257criminal action is similarly not relevant to the issue of probable cause.
The standard to be applied was stated in Taylor v. Hodge, 229 N.C. 558, 560, 50 S.E. 2d 307, 309 (1948), as whether plaintiff has shown “that the defendant acted against his own light —laid the charge regardless of facts within his knowledge which should have convinced a man of ordinary prudence and intelligence of the plaintiffs innocence of that crime . . . .” Measured by this criterion, the facts in the instant case would not, in my opinion, permit the jury to infer that defendant’s manager acted without probable cause.
The case of Williams v. Boylan-Pearce, Inc., 69 N.C. App. 315, 317 S.E. 2d 17 (1984) is in my judgment distinguishable for the reason that in Williams plaintiff was charged with larceny and the evidence showed that at the time she was arrested, plaintiff was an employee and did not commit the necessary trespass. Moreover, the search of plaintiffs pocketbook conducted before she was arrested, did not confirm the suspicion that she had placed something in her purse.
For the foregoing reasons, defendant’s motion for directed verdict should have been granted.