In Watson v. Bradsher and Ali, 2025 WL 2205853 (11th Cir. August 4, 2025), the Debtor met Plaintiffs at a bar and invited one of them to go home with him. She sternly rejected his advances and moved with her friend to another part of the bar. Debtor tried to pay his tab and could not find his wallet, and accused Plaintiffs of stealing it. “He admitted that he had not seen [Plaintiff] take his wallet but insisted that ‘th[o]se bitches got my wallet.’ He repeatedly demanded [Plaintiffs] arrest and threatened to have the bar shut down if the officers did not comply…. The next day, Watson found his wallet in his car.” Debtor’s accusations caused the police to detain the Plaintiffs.
[Plaintiffs] sued [Debtor] in state court for slander per se, false imprisonment, and battery. A jury returned a general verdict for [Plaintiffs]. The jury awarded [Plaintiff Bradsher] compensatory damages of $75,000 and punitive damages of $5,000. It awarded [Ali] compensatory damages of $25,000 and punitive damages of $5,000. The court also awarded the women $39,000 in attorney’s fees and $1,500 in expenses.
Debtor filed a Chapter 7 petition and Plaintiffs filed a proceeding to except the judgment debt from his discharge pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §523(a)(6). After a trial, Judge Ellis-Monro “ruled that the judgment debts for slander and false imprisonment were nondischargeable but that the judgment debt owed to Ali for battery was dischargeable. [She] found that Watson did not intend to make physical contact with Ali when he poked her forehead, so the injury could not have been “willful.” And [she] attributed $2,500 of Ali’s judgment to the debt for battery.”
The District Court affirmed in part and reversed in part, finding that “‘further clarification [was] necessary’ to determine whether the slander injury was ‘willful.’ It described the tension between the bankruptcy court’s finding that Watson ‘genuinely believed’ that Bradsher and Ali stole his wallet and its finding that Watson’s slander was ‘willful.’” On remand, the Bankruptcy Court held that Debtor’s slander was not willful because he genuinely believed Plaintiffs had stolen his wallet. Judge Ellis-Monro also apportioned the damages, finding that two-thirds of the damages award arose from the nondischargeable false imprisonment claim. The same percentage was used for the award of attorney’s fees and punitive damages. Debtor appealed a second time and the District Court affirmed.
The Eleventh Circuit first affirmed the finding that the judgment debt arising from false imprisonment was nondischargeable. Under Georgia law, the tort of false imprisonment requires proof of intent to cause injury, so that requirement of §523(a)(6) was met. The willfulness requirement was also established.
Bradsher’s and Ali’s confinement was the “injury,” and the bankruptcy court found that Watson intended to cause it. It found that [Debtor] intended his accusations to cause Bradsher and Ali to be detained by the police, that he continued accusing them of stealing his wallet and insisting that they go to jail, and that he threatened adverse consequences for any officer who did not cooperate. That [Debtor] genuinely believed that the women had stolen his wallet does not negate the fact that he willfully caused their confinement.
The malicious element was also established, as the Bankruptcy Court determined that Debtor’s actions were wrongful and excessive, rather than merely reporting a crime.
The bankruptcy court did not clearly err by finding that [Debtor] engaged in “wrongful” acts that were “excessive” when he relentlessly accused Bradsher and Ali of theft using profane and derogatory language, taunted and intimidated them with repeated threats of jail, and pressed officers to arrest them even after witnessing the officers confirm that the women were not carrying his wallet. Worse still, [Debtor] abused his position as a county commissioner by threatening the officers’ employment if his demands to arrest
Bradsher and Ali were not met. True, [Debtor] “genuinely believed” that his wallet had been stolen by Bradsher and Ali. But after reporting his wallet missing, [Debtor’s] civic duty was done. Despite his genuine yet mistaken belief, his later actions crossed the line from “civic duty” to report a crime into “wrongful” and “excessive” conduct.
The Circuit affirmed the holding that the debt was nondischargeable, and also affirmed the Bankruptcy Court’s allocation of damages.
The bankruptcy court did not clearly err in its allocation of the judgment debts. In finding that Bradsher’s and Ali’s injuries for false imprisonment were more substantial than their
injuries for slander, the bankruptcy court relied on testimony from Bradsher, Ali, and two officers who responded to the underlying altercation. The bankruptcy court considered the fear, embarrassment, and shame that Bradsher felt from being confined in the back of a police car. It also found that Bradsher suffered from insomnia, depression, and paranoia caused by her false imprisonment. As for Ali, it considered that being falsely imprisoned caused her to feel “violated” and that she now suffers from stress and sleep problems. Based on this evidence, it found that the “greater harm” suffered by Bradsher and Ali was attributable to “the temporary loss of liberty resulting from the false imprisonment,” not the “embarrassment resulting from the defamatory statements,” and it allocated two-thirds of their damages to their judgments for false imprisonment.
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