McGraw, J., dissenting:
Wal-Mart is West Virginia's
largest employer, largest retailer, and in many communities is the only game
in town. Clearly Mr. Belcher couldn't gain any satisfaction from the empty
threat of taking his business elsewhere. Filing suit was essentially his only
means of redress. In my view, Mr. Belcher deserved to have his case heard
by a jury, thus I must, respectfully, dissent.
The
majority finds that the lower court was right to grant summary judgment on both
the defamation claim and the unlawful detention claim. Our law favors disposition
on the merits, and we have long held that summary judgment is not preferred:
Because summary judgment forecloses
trial on the merits, this Court does not favor the use of summary judgment,
especially in complex cases, where issues involving motive and intent are present,
Masinter [v. Webco Co.], 164 W. Va. [241] at 243, 262 S.E.2d [433]
at 436, or where factual development is necessary to clarify application of
the law. Lengyel v. Lint, 167 W. Va. 272, 281, 280 S.E.2d 66, 71 (1981).
Alpine Property Owners Ass'n v. Mountaintop Development Co., 179 W. Va.
12, 17, 365 S.E.2d 57, 62 (1987). In light of this preference for resolution
on the merits, I feel that Mr. Belcher deserved to have a jury hear his case.
With respect to Mr. Belcher's
claim of unlawful detention, the majority finds that Mr. Belcher was free to
go at any point during his ninety minute ordeal. It is clear that Mr. Belcher
would not wish to leave the store without either the computer or his $845.88.
While the lower court found Mr. Belcher free to leave, it is unlikely in the
extreme that Mr. Belcher could have picked up the computer and strolled out
the door. Whether or not the actions of the store employees rose to the level
of unlawful detention should have been decided by a jury.
To support its holding with
respect to the claim of defamation, the majority finds that Mr. Belcher presented
insufficient evidence that the store employees made a defamatory statement or
communicated such a statement to a third party. Mr. Belcher presented evidence
that the employees accused him, in the presence of other shoppers, of presenting
a fraudulent receipt. It is clear that Mr. Belcher had to wait some time at
the return desk as several employees were called over to “investigate”
his receipt. It is also clear that the presence of the police officer, combined
with the activities of the employees, would suggest to anyone within sight or
earshot that something was amiss with Mr. Belcher. I believe that a jury should
have been allowed to determine if the actions and statements of the employees,
either together or separately, resulted in the communication of a defamatory
statement.
Finally, the majority notes
that Mr. and Mrs. Belcher undermined their defamation claim by relating their
story to friends or co-workers. Considering that Mr. Belcher had to spend an
hour an a half in the store on suspicion of stealing a computer he had purchased,
it is little wonder that the Belchers would tell others of the miserable treatment
Mr. Belcher suffered at the hands of the country's largest retailer .
Of course, in an earlier time,
the very threat that a customer would become dissatisfied with his or her treatment
and communicate this dissatisfaction to friends and family would prevent a store
from treating its shoppers so poorly. Today however, apparently the bottom line
is the only thing that interests most people, so we have traded personal service from a local retailer for suspicion of robbery from one
of the worlds largest companies.