A Co Meath woman was falsely imprisoned with her three children in a Dunnes Stores back room, a court was told yesterday.
Mr Justice Smyth was told that when mistakenly accused of stealing a lipstick, Ms Sandra McEvoy had been publicly "marched" by security staff through the store to the back room and held for questioning.
The Circuit Court president heard that after a search of her bags security staff in the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre store realised their mistake.
"I was very upset, embarrassed and humiliated at being brought back in front of all those people," Ms McEvoy, of Deerhaven View, Clonee, Co Meath, told the court.
A member of the security staff had told her: "You have a lipstick in your handbag which you have not paid for." Ms McEvoy said she had been recovering under medical supervision from a pre-existing depressive complaint and now intermittently relapsed into states of depression because of the traumatic incident in Dunnes.
She told her counsel, Mr Martin Dully, she had suffered sleeplessness and anxiety after the incident. Now she could not shop alone any more and lived in fear of being accused of something again.
Mr David Nolan, counsel for Dunnes, said his clients promptly admitted their mistake and both security and the manager immediately apologised to her.
"They offered her compensation of £1,000, sent her flowers and stated the next day in a letter of apology that Dunnes Stores considered her to be a person of the highest integrity and unblemished character, totally innocent of any wrongdoing," he said.
Mr Justice Smyth said that while Dunnes had proffered a generous apology for defamation of character there had been no reference to the false imprisonment of her and her children or the obviously forseeable distress imprisonment would have caused the children.
He awarded Ms McEvoy £15,000 damages for defamation, slander and false imprisonment.