No case in man’s lawsuit vs. CBU

Brown sued school for $1.3B for defamation

There will be no $1. 3 billion payday for a Memphis man who claimed in a lawsuit that security guards at Christian Brothers University mistreated him when he tried to get on campus posing as a student.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled that Kim Brown, 39, had no case when he accused the school of slander, defamation, false imprisonment, malicious harassment, civil conspiracy, assault, negligent supervision and a few other things.

In 2011, Brown said, school security guards gave him a hard time when he tried to enter the campus with no student parking pass and his nine-yearold student identification card.

When security officers told him to get a sticker and have a new ID made, Brown parked his car and then broke into a run and disappeared into a campus building.

Two weeks later, Brown returned, and an officer who recognized him placed him in handcuffs and checked for any outstanding warrants because of what the officer said was Brown’s “odd and suspicious” behavior.

When no warrants were found, security officers released him and told him not to return to campus until he had arranged a meeting with the campus police chief.

Brown said the officers told another student he might be the person who had been stealing books and accused the officers of defaming him by posting his picture around the CBU campus.

The school said his photo was shown only to a student who had met him — Brown told her his name was Ken Brown and that he was a student — and was not published in any public forum.

Brown then sued the school, the case went to trial last year — with Brown representing himself — and Circuit Court Judge Robert Weiss dismissed the suit before it got to the jury.

Brown said he had filed the suit to be “an inspiration” to others and acknowledged that he had filed suits on a number of other occasions when he felt he had been wronged.

The appeals court said the suit against CBU sounded similar to one he filed against Mapco Express in 2009 following an argument with the clerk who allegedly accused him of trying to do “a money switch.”

The court in that case said the accusations “may have been rude, annoying, embarrassing or disagreeable, but they did not rise to the level of defamation.”