November 2, 2008
Legal Department
Crime or Contract Dispute?
Good writing about social issues helps you understand them clearly. Great writing about social issues shows them to you in a whole new way. Really great writing shows you important social issues where you never noticed them before.
Scott Greenfield had a really great post about a guy who didn't pay all of his restaurant bill. Here are the facts, according to the Atlanta Hournal-Constitution:
Fulton County authorities arrested 40-year-old Dan Linscomb of Texas City, Texas, last week for refusing to pay his tab at the all-you-can-eat Iron Skillet buffet in northwest Atlanta. Officials say Linscomb ate at the buffet and let his girlfriend eat from his plate.
The restaurant charged him for two $7 meals, which he refused to pay. Linscomb was taken to the Fulton County Jail on a charge of theft of service. Fulton County Sheriff's Sgt. Nikita Hightower said Linscomb was released two days later after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.
Sounds okay, doesn't it? Scott has a problem with it, however, and I find his explanation of it fascinating:
Why do police become embroiled in matters that are purely civil in nature, and why, when they do, do they invariably side with the business over the individual?
While one might question whether Linscomb's refusal to pay the tab for his girlfriend's eating off his plate was tantamount to theft, it is not. It is a civil question of whether the girlfriend's nibbling constituted an obligation to pay an additional $7. A contract question, and nothing more. Contract questions are resolved by courts in their civil capacity everyday, and the parties involved always believe they're getting the shaft rather than a bona fide dispute exists.
But when the problem arises between a business, like the Iron Skillet, and one of its patrons, Linscomb, the cops are inevitably called to the scene. Why? Because there is an inherent bias by the police to protect their local businesses from disagreements with patrons.
I never thought of that.
I had a client a few years ago who I billed for a lot of money. He disputed my bill, but he sent me a check for the amount he thought he owed. Could I have gone to the police and had him arrested for theft? Presumably not. So how come I was on my own over a $20,000 consulting bill, but a restaurant can get someone arrested over a $7 tab?
For that matter, why couldn't Linscomb swear out a fraudulent business practices complaint against the restaurant for false billing? Isn't that only fair?
I suspect the answer is in the law. Somewhere there is a paragraph in a statute (or in case law) that explicitly criminalizes this man's behavior in a restaurant. One of Scott's commenters even points out the section of New York law that does it there. [Update: Scott says the commenter missed by a mile. The facts are all wrong.]
But that only raises the question, "Why?" Why is the law written that way? Why is the state willing to let these private businesses use the justice system as a collection agency?
I'm not saying Scott's post is right, but I never really noticed this strange discrepancy in the law before, and that's why Scott's post is interesting.
6 Comments
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No, no, no. The section related by the commenter was the basic theft of services, which had no applicability under the facts. This wasn't a guy trying to sneak out on a bill, but someone disputing a bill. It's entirely different, and I ignored the comment because it was just stupid. I'm not responsible for correcting every idiot who posts a comment, so don't assume that the lack of a smack means that the comment is correct.
Noted.
I don't like the tenor of Scott G.'s original post (in that it is embarrassingly argumentative), but I think he salvages himself with his comment here (which, unlike the original post, actually provides an explanation, albeit curt, for his view).
He accomplished more in one follow-up sentence than he did in a ten-paragraph blogpost.
An interesting discussion. I've got a meandering array of thoughts and questions.
Certainly, I recognize the difference between sneaking out on a bill and openly disputing whether one owes the amount in question. The former would appear to involve intent to cheat the restaurant owner. The latter does seem closer to what we typically think of as a civil dispute, but I think it's difficult to always draw a bright conceptual line.
What if I go into a grocery store, open packages of food and eat the contents while I wander around the store? If the store manager demands that I pay for what I've eaten, can I avoid arrest by arguing that I hadn't agreed to pay for the food or that the food was not of a quality I'd expected? Can I regularly eat in restaurants and grocery stores and dispute my obligation to pay without risk of arrest?
Apart from the legal questions, I wonder if we're just more inclined to see failure to pay as an intentional criminal act when we're dealing with tangible products and an expectation of immediate payment before leaving the business premises? In real life, police do sometimes try to draw distinctions between honest mistakes (I forgot my wallet) and intentional acts. In the case Greenfield is discussing, he characterizes the girlfriend's behavior as 'nibbling,' a loaded word that might lead us to imagine that she merely ate a couple of olives. If that was the case, charging the man for an additional meal strikes me as absurd. But, what if the woman was just plain dining off her boyfriend's plate and what if it appeared to the restaurant staff that she was attempting to conceal the extent of her eating? This scenario does not seem beyond the realm of possibility. It would be interesting to know more about what really took place and whether the account of the restaurant management led police to believe that there was intent to commit theft.
I also wonder why the male customer was arrested, but not the female. The allegation is that she ate the food. He paid for his own meal. Why is he, but not she, financially responsible for what was consumed at their shared table and why does criminal intent reside with him, rather than his female companion?
All good points, doc. I am particularly curious about why he can be charged with a crime for not paying for what his companion ate. It seems counterintuitive: If neither of them paid, I assume they both could be charged with a crime, but since he paid, only he gets charged.
On the other hand, I wonder if I'm missing other crimes that depend on the police just arbitrarily taking sides...
Sorry to hear that Kip found my post embarrassingly argumentative. There's a simple solution to prevent Kip from ever having to suffer such embarrassment again.