A Tennessee man who was accused of using a racial slur on a receipt at a Red Lobster restaurant last year is suing the restaurant chain and the waitress who cashed in on the incident after she posted a copy of the receipt on the Internet.
Devin Barnes, 21, claims he never wrote the racial slur on the receipt, and that the negative attention he received as a result of the way Toni Christina Jenkins - the waitress who claims to have received the slur - publicized the incident is slanderous.
In Barnes' suit, filed in Williamson County Circuit Court, he claims Jenkins slandered him by misusing his personal information, and that Red Lobster's 'willful and malicious ... omissions to act' by failing to prevent Jenkins from using his name and information 'to gain publicity and money' has caused lasting damage to his reputation.
On the receipt, a photo of which was posted on Facebook and Youtube in September by the 19-year-old waitress, the line designated for a tip read 'none.' On the line for the total, it read 'n***er.'
Jenkins left a caption on the photo that was uploaded to her Facebook page that read 'This is what I got as a tip last night...so happy to live in the proud southern states...God Bless America, land of the free and home of the low class racists of Tennessee.'
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| Not happy but thanks anyways. |
Barnes' signature is visible in the photo directly below the offensive slur.
In the weeks following Jenkins' posting the photo on the web, the left-wing blog AddictingInfo.org started an online fundraiser for her that raised more than $10,000 - money Jenkins later said she planned to use to buy a car.
Barnes admits that he didn't tip Jenkins, but says he didn't tip her because the order was a takeout order - but he adamant that he never wrote the slurs on the receipt, and even hired a hand-writing analyst to take analyze the receipt.
The handwriting analyst found that 'no significant handwriting characteristics similarities' were found between the questioned 'total' entry line and the handwriting samples provided by Barnes and his wife, the Tennessean reports.
Barnes even wrote a note to the waitress explaining that he never uses the 'n-word' and that he has no idea how it ended up written on the receipt.
According to Duggar, Barnes and his family have been getting 'threats from all over the world,' and that the incident has caused his client 'great harm and mental anguish.'
'The plaintiff is not now, nor has he ever been, a "racist;" but now as a result of the defendant's acts and omissions to act, your plaintiff has been tagged a "racist" world wide,' the suit says.
The suit goes on to say that Jenkins exploited Barnes and purposefully dramatized the incident 'to a point that she profited from it.'
In all, AddictingInfo.org raised $10,719 in its 'Tips for Toni' campaign from more than 1,000 contributors across the globe.
Red Lobster, the suit claims, is equally responsible for the anguish Barnes claims he's suffered as a result of Jenkins' actions because it failed to take action against Jenkins and it did nothing to resolve the matter with Barnes.
Barnes is seeking $1 million in his suit against Jenkins and the restaurant.
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