Law&Crime Sidebar - TikToker Claims Bouncers Violently Assaulted Her, Security Video Tells Another Story: Lawsuit

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

The restaurant and bar Hubbard Inn in Chicago says Julia Reel intentionally fabricated a story that went viral on TikTok. Reel accused the bar's bouncers of “manhandling her” and throwing her down two sets of stairs. Hubbard Inn responded with its own video, showing security footage of Reel being calmly escorted out. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes the legal action Hubbard Inn is now taking with defamation attorney Joe Meadows.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So they are grottles immediately. They don't even give us a chance to walk out on our own. A woman says a bouncer at a popular Chicago bar and restaurant manhandled her and even threw her down a staircase. But now, the establishment's owners say that absolutely did not happen, and they're filing

a lawsuit against her for defamation. We're digging into how she's fighting back, and the video, the bar says, proves she's lying. We discuss with defamation attorney Joe Meadows. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. A restaurant versus a TikToker. It's an interesting legal case. that has just surfaced, and we want to talk a little bit more about it.

So we have a young woman named Julia Real, and she says that security at a Chicago restaurant bar called Hubbard Inn kicked her out of the establishment alongside of her friend, and she says that they were less than nice about it. In fact, Real posted about her experience on TikTok, and the allegations quickly went very viral. I'm immediately grabbed by this man, and he's grabbing my arm, he's pushing me, he's manhandling me, And what is going on? What is the issue here?

Why are you guys? Why are you screaming at us? So what happened next? Well, Hubbard didn't respondent, saying, this is not true. On its own TikTok page, it posted side-by-side images from their security video as Reel described what happened to her earlier this month. Why are you grabbing me and manhandling me and dragging me using my bag to pull me out? This video from the restaurant shows a man wearing a jacket with security on the back.

seemingly escorting a woman identified as Reel down the hallway. I'm just pushed down. He sends me a line down the staircase. Hysterical at this point, I think I start to kind of yell, scream back at him, kind of push back at him, and he takes me a second time and shows me again and sends me flying down the rest of the staircase. Now, the security footage seems to also show that Reel was walking down a staircase. She and another woman appear to be talking, maybe even laughing at the bottom of the stairs,

before a security member points them toward the exit. Surveillance then shows her leaving. Now, TikTok users quickly turned against Reel, calling her out for apparently lying for likes and views. Reel's TikTok account now only has one video, and it is a response from her legal team. They said in part, quote, while the investigation into this incident is ongoing,

our initial investigation has revealed facts entirely contrary to the misleading narrative provided on social media by Hubbard Inn. It goes on to state, What Hubbardon fails to mention in its self-serving post is that the area where Ms. Reel suffered injuries was not videotaped. They claim there's a two-minute gap that's unaccounted for in the videos that the bar posted and said, quote, it's undisputed that Reel suffered a concussion and had other significant injuries. The video ends by encouraging the public to hold off on picking aside until all the evidence

is presented in court. And that leads to Monday when Hubbard House Restaurant LLC filed a defamation. lawsuit against Julia Reel. The start of the lawsuit, the restaurant group says, quote, one of its patrons, defendant, had a bad experience of her own making late one Saturday night and was asked by plaintiff's staff to leave their establishment. Rather than moving on with her life, defendant decided to publicly and falsely accused plaintiff and its staff of physically assaulting her on TikTok, a popular public social media platform.

Hubbard said that it reached out to Real multiple times to take down the post but said she never responded. So that's when they released their own TikTok video and decided to file the lawsuit. They state, quote, as a result of defendants' TikTok post, plaintiff has lost business with at least 12 group cancellations. As a further result of defendants' posts, plaintiff has received numerous negative one-star reviews on Yelp further harming plaintiff's reputation. Plaintiff also received many critical messages on Instagram and other popular social media

site and negative or threatening voicemails. The restaurant bar says it lost about $30,000 in revenue from event and reservation cancellations, but what about that missing two minutes of footage, right? that Reel had mentioned. Well, Hubbard Inn says, actually, there's only about 45 seconds where Real isn't on camera. The lawsuit explains, quote, not surprisingly, Hubbard's security camera footage does not cover every square foot of the premises or every second of defendant's exit from the premises, including the top of the staircase, flights of stairs leading down from the second floor to the main floor. The footage does show, however, defendant being calmly escorted down the second floor hallway and defendant walking down the bottom part of the upper flight of stairs, the landing between. the upper and lower flight of stairs, the lower flight of stairs, and out of the establishment. Plaintiff says that Rio committed defamation when she listed her allegations against Hubbard Inn,

and they want the court to award damages. Further court date for updates on the case is scheduled for May. This is according to Illinois court records. So let's talk about it. I want to bring in right now, Joe Meadows, an attorney who specializes in defamation. Joe, thanks so much for coming here on Sidebar. Happy to be here. Happy to talk about this interesting case.

So is there a case? I mean, it seems to me, just on looking at it, if you got the receipts, if you got the video showing that someone's account is not true, it seems like they might have an argument, but you're hearing that there might be missing footage. What do you make of it? Exactly. I mean, if there is missing footage, if we don't have all the video here of what took place and you take Ms. Real for what she said being the truth, then we've got a he said, she said case. I mean, we've got a real said, Julia Reel said something. We've got a Hubbard Inn said story. We've got the TikTok users story.

We've got the lawyers now talking about it in their legal papers, and that's what you have a court system and a jury for. The thing that really, I think the defendant, excuse me, I think that the plaintiff, the Hubbard Inn really articulated well, and you have to prove in a defamation case is the harm. What did they suffer, right? So obviously I mentioned some of their they lost, they allegedly lost $30,000, cancellations, negative reviews. I just want to highlight another part of this lawsuit. It says, quote, defendant published those statements on the popular social media site TikTok on March 10th, 2024, where it was viewed over 100,000 times.

At the time, she published these statements, defendant knew the publication was false or otherwise acted with negligence. Defendant's publication of these defamatory statements has injured the reputations of plaintiff's business and staff, lowering plaintiff in the eyes of the community, and deterring the community from associating with plaintiff. On the evening of March 9th, 2024, and into the morning of March 10th, 20204, defendant and her friend visited Hubbard Inn

and became verbally abusive toward plaintiff's staff and the second floor bathroom. Plaintiff staff members brought security to escort defendant and her friend from the premises. This was done professionally, safely, and in a calm manner. At no point while defendant exited the premises did any member of plaintiff's staff assault, push, shove, or manhandle her.

So what do you make of the idea of how they've articulated the damages, their harm, what they've suffered, and the elements of defamation. Well, I mean, from a legal standpoint, you have to tick off if you're a defamation plaintiff, and I've been on both sides, plaintiff and defense. If you're the plaintiff, you've got to tick off the boxes of what you need to allege to state a claim. And then that's the bare minimum. And then oftentimes you want to add some more flavor facts to your complaint to show the

strength of your case, maybe for the media interest and get people. people on your side in the public atmosphere. So I'm not surprised that they have put their complaint together this way. It'll be interesting to see how Ms. Real responds and whether or not she responds with an answer or motion dismiss or maybe she even adds in a counterclaim based on the video that Hubbard put out there with its own statements. In other words, she would fire back with her own defamation claim. Yeah, exactly.

It's not uncommon to have a defamation complaint. And then the other side says, well, yeah, and the way you responded to it, you defame me, too. This happens a lot in various types of assault cases where one person will say, hey, you're wrongly accused me of this. And then the defendant will say, well, you're also calling me a liar. So I'm going to sue you for that. So then you're going to have dueling defamation claims. Talking defamation, that's a civil action. That's a lawsuit.

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They didn't even bother to do the research. Now, normally you would say if that was a publication, right a newspaper who prints something about a public figure they didn't even bother to check if it was real or not this seems to be a case where it's either real as telling the truth about what happened or she's not right i mean it's not like she had to do an investigation it either she experienced her being assaulted or she didn't um i don't think there's much middle ground here so a walk me through what you think the standard is here and b am i right that it's pretty black and white right so on the standard there's always an intent aspect in any definitely case and the standard for intent is either negligence for a private plaintiff or its actual malice if you're a public figure plaintiff's celebrity politician that type of person or you're a plaintiff who was out there pushing an issue and out in the media talking about some sort of public interest

issue and the defamation arises out of that I don't I mean without more I don't I don't see that here This seems to be two private parties, and so without more, the standard seems to be negligence, a little bit lower. So Hubbard Inn wouldn't have much to prove in terms of the intent factor to establish their claim. Flipside, if Ms. Real counterclaims ensues Hubbard, I don't see how she's a limited purpose public figure or a public figure that she would have to prove actual malice either. You're absolutely right on the truth-falsity aspect. It's black or white. She says in her tick talk videos that people grabbed her, manhandled her, pushed her down, flying down the stairs. Those are, you can either prove that's true or prove it's false. It doesn't seem to be very opinionated.

And of course, Hubbard-in says none of that was true. I think there's something to also be said by the fact that they have chosen to file a lawsuit. That in and of itself was important to restore their reputation. Again, we don't know what really happened here, right? But the idea of, hey, we're not only going to defend ourselves, we're not even not only show video of what happened and compare it to your account, Ms. Real. But we're actually going to file a lawsuit. Do you think that helps them and their restore some of their reputation by just filing the lawsuit? Well, look, I don't know, but this escalated quickly. I mean, you think about it.

March 9th was the event. And if you notice in the complaint, they say it was March 9th into the morning of March 10th. I don't know if they're trying to signal something there as this was a late night event, but I did pick up on that. So March 9th was the event. March 10th, Ms. Real did her TikTok post. Three days later, March 13th, Hubbard in did their counter post. Two days or three days after that, Ms. Rio and her law firm did their countercounter post. And then two days after that, you had a lawsuit. So things rapidly escalated into a lawsuit here. Sometimes it is a strategic call to file the lawsuit to show people that what was said about you was wrong to try to restore your reputation. I wonder if the Hubbard N tried to work with Ms. Real on things to get her

to take her post down and she either did not respond or denied that. That's what they claim. That's what they claim. Yeah. And then so I guess they had no, they felt like they had no choice and wanted to make this a public record. Do you think this is going to advance all the way to a trial, which could happen, you know, years down the line? Or do you think this is a case? that in your experience would settle you know in the past 20 some years civil trials are rarer and rarer and that's usually a lot having to do with the cost of litigation but when you have a a true he said she said black and white situation if you have two parties who are absolutely convinced of the truth and and money is no object here um then then they'll probably go toe to toe all the way

this doesn't seem like a case where you've got some opinion issues or maybe some other legal arguments to toss out the claim. So she says that there's footage that's missing. And if that's true, and, you know, Hubbard came back and said, look, we can't cover every inch of our establishment. They say it was only 45 seconds that was missing. But I'm looking at the video at the very end, right, when she was allegedly being walked out. And I'm trying to see if she was attacked, if she was pushed down the stairs, would she be behaving? differently. And I'm curious what your point of view was from watching the video. Yeah, maybe there's pieces of footage missing. But from what we do see, what does it tell you? Well, I mean, that's exactly

what a jury would do when you present all this evidence. You're not going to have the complete story because there's video missing. So jury is allowed to make decisions and terminations based on circumstantial evidence and how Ms. Real was acting on the video, you know, from a circumstantial evidence standpoint, could fill in the gaps. And maybe a jury says to themselves, this doesn't appear like someone who had just been manhandled or thrown down or hit in the gap period that we don't have video for. And that weighs in favor of Hubbard Inn. But, you know, there's also, forget the video and camera. Maybe there are other witnesses that would come out in the trial. witnesses for Hubbard N. Maybe other patrons for Ms. Real that would come forward and support one

side or the other. In the lawsuit, I believe Hubbard Inn mentions that their staff and personnel are witnesses to what happened. But, you know, in terms of who Real can have to support her claim, that would be interesting. I wanted to end really quickly by asking you about the big picture on this, right? One of the things that caught my attention about it was that you have a TikToker being sued. I don't have TikTok any, but I do have Instagram. And constantly what you see are, you know, influencers giving their opinions about restaurants and establishments and experiences, some positive, but also negative ones. This is obviously an extreme case where you have an individual accusing a restaurant of physically harming her. But what about the ones

that make claims about different establishments? And should they be concerned that they face legal liability, that the points that they make will open them up to defamation claims? Or, again, Is this more of a extreme example, and it kind of depends upon what they're saying? I think it's an extreme example. It does depend on what they're saying. How you say it and what you say it and where you say it are all important in defamation cases. I would say 99% of the time anybody's doing a review on a restaurant or any type of business, you know, their opinion statements. I didn't like it.

The service was bad. The food didn't taste good. Those are all opinions. You can't prove the truth or falsity of those statements, and the First Amendment protects people to say those things. It's when you cross the line and you talk about things that are actually provable, you know, as a matter of fact or it's, or it's false that it's something that you could bring a court claim for. But most of the time, people are just giving their opinions, putting on a one star or two star, and you can't really take people to court for that kind of thing.

Joe Meadows, thanks so much for coming on. I find defamation case is fascinating and I'm sure this will not be the last one that we cover. So if you have the time, I'd love to have you back on, sir. to do it again. All right, everybody, that is all we have for you right now here on this episode of Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.