Two Black cross-country truck drivers filed a federal lawsuit this month alleging they were denied service and harassed at a Denny’s restaurant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Each man is seeking damages of $4 million.
Damon Whitfield and Hector Madera, who live in Pennsylvania, work as a long-haul trucking team and were transporting a load from Seattle back to the East Coast when they stopped at a Pilot Flying J gas station just off the highway on Aug. 13, 2023, their lawsuit says.
Their plan was to rest, shower and grab a bite at the Denny’s located inside the gas station. While Madera showered, Whitfield went into the restaurant to order breakfast for both of them before they resumed their drive.
He was seated by waitress Anne Fletcher, who gave him menus and took and served his order of orange juice. Over the next 30 minutes, more customers arrived and were waited on by Fletcher, who did not return to his table.
Madera arrived, and after another 15 minutes had passed with no contact, the men decided to flag down their waitress.
Madera said, “Excuse me, we’re ready to place our order,” Whitfield recounted to Dakota News Now. Fletcher, who is white, curtly replied, “I don’t appreciate you yelling at me,” to which Whitfield says he responded, “He just said excuse me. He didn’t yell.”
“Then she goes, ‘I don’t need you people calling me over to this table,’” Whitfield recalled. “He says, ‘Yeah, but I see you serving people that came in after us,’ and then she goes, ‘You know what? I’m not serving you people. You leave now or I’m calling the police,’” Whitfield said.
Then Fletcher snatched the menus out of the men’s hands, as well as the orange juice from the table, spilling some of the juice on Whitfield, he said.
The men observed Fletcher on the phone and assumed she was talking to the police. They decided not to leave the restaurant “to avoid being accused of absconding from the scene without paying for the orange juice,” the lawsuit, obtained by Atlanta Black Star, says.
Trying to defuse the situation and still hoping to get their breakfast and get back on the road, Madera approached Fletcher and “tried to speak with her about the misunderstanding,” the complaint says.
Fletcher cut him off and allegedly said, “There is no misunderstanding, the police are coming. I want you people to leave.”
Fletcher had called the regional manager, Michael Fletcher, who in turn had called the Sioux Falls Police Department, asking to have the two men removed for causing a disturbance, the lawsuit says.
In a recording of the 911 call released months later, Fletcher said the men were “unruly” and had refused to leave.
At that point, Madera and Whitfield, now aware they were the only Black people in the restaurant, began recording with their phones.
Madera asked another female server if she could help them order food. She said she would and gave them menus. But she soon returned, telling them that Fletcher would like them to leave without causing a scene and disturbing their other patrons.
“What did we do?” Whitfield can be heard asking on the phone in the video recording.
“I have no idea,” the server replied, then said, “To make the situation more calm, because we do have a lot of people here, it would just be nice if you guys could leave.”
Two Sioux Falls police officers then walked up to their table and asked the two men to step outside.
“They were walked out of Denny’s restaurant escorted by the police officers as if they were criminals,” the complaint says. Both felt “humiliated, embarrassed and dehumanized.”
The police officers told them that they were responding to a complaint that two men were reportedly being aggressive with staff and causing a disruption. After speaking with Madera and Whitfield for a few minutes, however, “and learning what actually occurred,” the officers declined to arrest them.
“I’m sorry that happened to you guys,” one of the officers can be heard saying on the recording.
In the days and weeks that followed the incident, the men, stunned by the experience of overt racism, called local and corporate Denny’s representatives to complain, seeking a public apology, they told attorney Rashad Richey on his “Indisputable” podcast in September 2023.
They got no satisfaction, Whitfield said, though after the incident, top executives from Pilot Flying J and Denny’s called him to personally apologize.
On September 4, 2023, Denny’s released a public statement from Roland Sponberg, the president and chief executive officer of WKS Restaurant Group, which owns and operates more than 100 Denny’s locations nationwide, including the one in Sioux Falls.
It said that “Denny’s is committed to a culture of inclusion and excellence for all guests,” and noted that the company had conducted a “thorough third-party investigation into the incident” and that as a result, the franchise owner had fired Fletcher.
The CEO further stated that “Denny’s maintains a strict zero-tolerance policy when it comes to any form of discrimination. We acknowledge there were opportunities to improve the service level in this specific situation. We maintain our commitment to ongoing training and development of all staff. The employees at the location will immediately go through a dedicated training program to ensure the team delivers above and beyond our guests’ expectations. We regret this incident and want to apologize to the guests involved. Clearly, we fell short of our own standards that day and are committed to making it right.”
On the “Indisputable” podcast, Whitfield called the statement “a half apology. More needs to be done,” he said. “We’ve made progress in race relations, but how far have we gotten?” he asked, and further observed, “You can’t train a racist. A racist is a racist. That’s deep-rooted.”
“I feel as though they took a piece from us that day,” Madera said on the podcast. “They took something that we can’t get back. “It’s kind of degrading. They robbed us. They tried to rob us of our humility and dignity and self-worth and respect. … I believe it’s unfair. I want them to be held accountable.”
Their amended lawsuit, filed on July 17 in the U.S. District Court for South Dakota, accuses Denny’s Corporation, its franchisee WKS Restaurant Group, the Pilot Flying J gas station, Anne Fletcher, and Michael Fletcher of “explicit racial discrimination” in violation of federal civil rights law.
The plaintiffs were denied their right to make a contract with Denny’s by purchasing food and denied their right to a public accommodation — to sit in and enjoy the restaurant, as the other white customers were doing —when Anne Fletcher refused to serve them and when Michael Fletcher summoned the police on the false pretext that they were unruly patrons, the lawsuit claims.
The defendants mistreated them while acting with discriminatory intent, in denial of their federally and constitutionally protected rights, causing them public embarrassment and humiliation, severe emotional distress, mental pain and suffering, and injury to dignity, the complaint contends.
They seek a jury trial to determine compensatory, general and special damages of no less than $4 million for each plaintiff, as well as punitive damages in an amount that will punish the defendants’ conduct and to “discourage others from engaging in similar discrimination in the future.”
One of their lead counsel, Erica Wilson, a civil rights attorney at The Fairness Firm in Tucker, Georgia (along with podcaster Richey) said in an Instagram post in 2023 that she is the daughter and granddaughter of truck drivers and knows “the sacrifices these men make daily to be able to provide for their families,” reported Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
Wilson also wrote that she was “disheartened” that her clients were “reduced to common criminals for merely wanting to grab breakfast so they could get back to work.”
“It is absolutely ridiculous that we are in 2023 and the video you may have seen felt like it was 1953,” she said.
The defendants have 21 days after being served with the plaintiff’s amended complaint (filed on July 17), or until August 7, to file a response in the U.S. District Court in South Dakota.
Great Job Jill Jordan Sieder & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
