Idaho Falls restaurant suing Facebook commenters for defamation
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IDAHO FALLS — A local restaurant is going after a group of Facebook commenters after allegations that a sexual assault occurred on its property went viral earlier this year.
Stockman’s Restaurant, along with owners Chris Bird and Trevor Noles, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against six people based on what they say are “derogatory comments made on false accusations.”
The defendants are Carrie “Bear Lynne” Royce and husband Daniel Royce, Makendra Hess, Jill Cameron, Monica Rankin and Emily Hart Randall.
The company claims the defendants led an online campaign to get customers to boycott the business, all based on an unsubstantiated event.
The commenters are standing by their actions and say the ownership of the restaurant ignored a sexual assault after they learned of the allegations.
The background
The conflict began in late February, when Carrie Royce, who goes by the moniker “Bear Lynne” on Facebook, wrote a Facebook post about her daughter, who was an employee at the restaurant.
In the lengthy post, Royce said her daughter had been “repeatedly sexually assaulted for months” by a manager at Stockman’s. The post referred to a specific instance in which her daughter was allegedly “thrown through a door at the restaurant for defending herself.”
After that incident, Royce said, her daughter contacted the Idaho Falls Police Department and told the owners of Stockman’s Restaurant about the alleged sexual assault.
Following the report to the owners, Royce said her daughter was progressively removed from the work schedule and, to their knowledge, the manager was not punished. Eventually, the daughter opted to quit her job at Stockman’s, according to the Facebook post.
Royce finished the post with a request to friends and family.
“I’d ask that you never again spend money at Stockman’s, and spread the word. The owners exemplify why #MeToo is a thing (do not care about possible victims of sexual violence on their property as well as protect the accused above the victim).”
Not long after the post went up, thousands of people in eastern Idaho saw the post and shared it more than 400 times. Many of the commenters urged a boycott of the restaurant through the hashtag #boycottstockmans.
A significant number of negative reviews were posted, and continue to be posted, on the Stockman’s Facebook account regarding the alleged assault.
“Sounds like you guys need a change in management and definitely a change in values. Family friend or not, a rapist is a rapist. The fact that you fired someone who was strong enough to speak up is disgusting,” one reviewer wrote.
Several of the women who are defendants in the case began spamming comments on previous positive reviews that were months old.
“You may want to rethink doing business here,” Jill Cameron wrote in the comments of a 5-star review from April 2018. “A young lady’s parents just recounted how their daughter was RAPED by a manager at Stockman’s and when brought to the owner’s attention the young lady, also an employee, was taken off the schedule and nothing was done to the manager!!! #boycottstockmans”
Police investigation
Despite the post’s popularity, no one has been arrested or legally accused of sexual assault or rape in relation to this case.
When EastIdahoNews.com tried to confirm the Royce family’s claim that police were contacted, Idaho Falls Police Department spokeswoman Jessica Clements said due to department policy, she cannot confirm a specific investigation.
“At the Idaho Falls Police Department we do not identify or release the names of sexual assault victims,” Clements said. “This is in order to protect them and preserve whatever privacy they choose to have through what can be a very difficult time in a person’s life. That being said, we take allegations of sexual assault very seriously and investigate these cases as thoroughly as possible.”
The lawsuit
In the lawsuit filed by Stockman’s Restaurant, Bird and Noles claim the six defendants defamed the restaurant and intentionally tried to damage the business’s relationship with customers.
As a result, Stockman’s “suffered and continue(s) to suffer damages, including, but not limited to loss of business, loss of reputation, loss of contract and emotional distress,” according to the lawsuit.
The owners say there was a romantic relationship between the Royces’ daughter and the accused employee, but the employee has never been a manager at the restaurant.
The court documents directly address the instance referred to in Royce’s post where she said her daughter was pushed through a door. Stockman’s claims the employee arrived at the restaurant on Nov. 28 when she wasn’t working and was allegedly intoxicated.
The daughter and the accused employee had a discussion, and after it was done, the daughter left the room. While going through the door, court documents say she either passed out or was pushed to the ground.
Stockman’s says Royce’s daughter reported the incident to ownership, but did not mention any sort of sexual assault.
Management said they found both employees were accusing each other of making unwanted physical contact during the incident. According to the lawsuit, the owners took disciplinary action to address the situation, none of which involved the daughter. They instructed both employees to cease contact with each other.
Stockman’s admits to reducing the daughter’s hours but say it was because of the difficulty involved in keeping the two individuals from working on the same shift, and because of new holiday hires.
The owners claim they found out about the sexual assault allegation in Carrie Royce’s Feb. 21 Facebook post.
The business asserts that many of the claims in the post are false, and as a result, the restaurant has suffered ridicule, harassment and a loss of business. They are demanding a jury trial.
DeAnne Casperson, the owners’ attorney, issued the following statements on her clients’ behalf:
- “The owners of Stockman’s strongly oppose any acts of sexual abuse and support all victims to pursue legal remedies. Stockman’s did not, and would not, ignore an employee’s report of sexual abuse or harassment in the workplace.”
- “By the same token, Stockman’s takes very seriously unfounded attacks on its integrity and the integrity of its owners, particularly those launched through social media. We urge the public to form opinions based on established facts rather than unfounded rumors.”
When asked if the accused employee still worked at Stockman’s, Casperson says she could not comment.
The defendants respond
EastIdahoNews.com reached out to all of the defendants listed in the case and, for the most part, they are standing by their statements and actions on Facebook.
Commenter and defendant Makendra Hess, who is not affiliated with Royce, said when she saw the circulating post, it “hurt her heart.”
“I didn’t want to go and make them lose business … but I did want to get the word out,” Hess says. “A lot of the time these things get swept under the rug and kept hush-hush.”
Hess says she used the #boycottstockmans hashtag not to be malicious, but to make the posts more searchable and because it was used in original posts.
“Because the allegations may or may not be true, I do feel somewhat remorseful because it has impacted (Stockman’s), but at the same time if it had been true, then I wouldn’t even be being sued,” Hess says. “I never once said anything concretely happened or that no one should do business there. I simply prompted people to make their own decision.”
Cameron, who is also not affiliated with Royce, said she shared the story to “support Royce’s daughter during a devastating time.” She said it was unfortunate that Stockman’s restaurant didn’t appear to take a rape accusation seriously.
“The other defendants and I are not the ones guilty of damaging Stockman’s reputation, in my opinion,” Cameron said. “Stockman’s turning a blind eye to rape and sexual assault is where the responsibility lies.”
Cameron says the lawsuit is frivolous, and she won’t be giving it much attention.
The Royces have not issued an official statement on the lawsuit, although they dispute the restaurant’s accounting of events. Carrie Royce said her intention wasn’t to hurt Stockman’s and she hadn’t predicted the post would go viral.
Her original post on Facebook had been either removed or hidden from the public.
After the Post Register recently published a story about the lawsuit, Carrie Royce posted on Facebook that a lawsuit doesn’t mean someone is right or wrong.
“There were other, more effective, more decent ways to put out the fire than waging a war of twisted words tearing apart a 19-year-old girl,” she wrote.
She also posted the following statement:
“I just have to have faith that the ‘truth will out’ in front of the jury … Like I have faith in the honest and loving girl I raised, and confidence that all she did ‘wrong’ was ask her employers for a safe workplace. The other women named in the lawsuit don’t deserve this. It’s grossly unfair to their speech freedom. It’s a tactic to scare more people from speaking out, and it’s working. Young women and their families in Idaho Falls will be terrified to report abuse at work and/or by colleagues. Is that a win?”