Ma, daughter can sue IHOP in 'lowlife' dis
A Queens teen wants to take International House of Pancakes to the cleaners for calling her mom a "lowlife."
A judge has cleared the way for Ashley Kinsler to sue IHOP for defamation after a restaurant manager falsely charged that her mom tried to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill.
Ashley, who was 7 at the time of the 1999 incident, suffered an asthma attack because of the confrontation, according to her suit. She and her mom are asking for $100,000 in damages.
"Ashley has been through a lot since then," her mother, Judith Kinsler, said yesterday. "She started wetting the bed. She was having nightmares. It was horrible. We don't go to restaurants anymore."
The case appears to be the first in the state in which a bystander to slander is being allowed to pursue a claim for injuries, according to the New York Law Journal.
The Jan. 26, 1999, incident began after the manager of the IHOP on Hillside Ave. in Jamaica, Queens, accused Kinsler of passing a bad note when she paid for some eggs and pancakes. "He started saying I was some sort of lowlife, that I was a thief," said Kinsler, 30, who said she had just gotten the $20 from an ATM machine.
The police were called, and the dispute ended after the cops allowed Kinsler to retrieve her ATM receipt from her car.
Ashley, petrified and crying at the commotion, had the asthma attack as they left.
"It was so humiliating, it was so totally wrong," Kinsley said in explaining why she and Ashley, now 13, filed the suit in August 1999.
IHOP's lawyers tried to have Ashley's claim dismissed. But Queens Civil Court Judge Charles Markey ruled that Ashley had a right to sue because of the asthma attack.
"If [the IHOP manager] committed . . . slander, and the plaintiffs can causally connect the asthma attack to the incident, there is no reason that plaintiff Ashley cannot recover" damages, he wrote.
IHOP said it plans to appeal.
