A Restaurant Owner Receives $5 Million After His Business Was Raided by a Sheriff
Maricopa County officials approved a settlement Wednesday with a restaurant owner in metro Phoenix who claimed in a lawsuit that then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office had defamed him and violated his rights about seven years ago when investigating whether employees at his restaurants used fraudulent IDs to get jobs.
The $5 million settlement with Uncle Sam’s owner Bret Frimmel came weeks after officials signed off on a separate $400,000 settlement to resolve similar claims brought by Uncle Sam’s manager Lisa Norton. County officials approved $3.1 million of Frimmel’s settlement. The remaining $1.9 million in his settlement is being covered by an insurer.
Frimmel and Norton were arrested by Arpaio’s office in January 2014 on employment-related identity theft charges that were dismissed after a judge ruled one of Arpaio’s detective recklessly disregarded the truth in affidavits used to get search warrants and ultimately found that there was no probable cause to back up the warrants. Frimmel and Norton maintained they did nothing wrong.
