Red Lobster Racist Receipt Lawsuit: Customer Sues Restaurant for $1 Million, Says He Didn't Write Ethnic Slur

By Daniel Distant, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, May 29, 2014

A Red Lobster racist receipt resulted in a $1 million lawsuit against the restaurant, according to reports. A customer in Franklin, Tennessee was accused of writing the n-word in place of a tip for his African-American server, and when the receipt went viral with his personal information, he claimed he was the victim of defamation in a lawsuit filed last week Thursday.

The Red Lobster racist receipt was originally posted in September of last year after Devin Barnes and his wife got a to-go order at the popular seafood chain. Instead of tipping on the $44.53 bill, Barnes says he wrote "none" on the receipt. But when their server, 19-year-old Toni Christina Jenkins, posted a note on Facebook about it, she said he wrote "none n-----" instead.

"This is what I got as a tip last night," she wrote on Facebook in a post that later went viral. "So happy to live in the proud southern states…God Bless America, land of the free and home of the low class racists of Tennessee."

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However, Barnes, who has since received threats for his alleged act of racism, said he never wrote the offensive slur on the receipt. He filed his lawsuit in Williamson County, Tennessee against Jenkins and Red Lobster.

"Three wrongs have been done here," Richard Dugger, Barnes lawyer, told The Huffington Post. "First of all, whoever wrote that name on the receipt is very, very wrong. I know neither Devin nor his wife did it. Second, Miss Jenkins posting it all over the world is very, very wrong. The third wrong is that Red Lobster did nothing to say, 'Stop it, put an end to it.' Two wrongs or three wrongs never make a right."

At the time of the incident, Red Lobster did reprimand Jenkins for posting a customer's personal information online, even though she admitted not knowing who wrote the n-word on it. Still, after the story went viral, a Reddit user started a fundraiser called "Tips for Toni" that raised over $10,000, most of which went to her nursing school tuition and church.

"I was not trying to get back at him or bring any attention to him at all," Jenkins told The Tennessean last year. "I have nothing against him. I can only imagine what he is going through. I was trying to bring attention to racism."