False-Arrest Incident Costs Bullock’s $250,000

Bullock’s has agreed to pay $250,000 to two men who were arrested after being falsely accused of attempting to steal a pair of trousers from the chain’s Northridge store, a lawyer for the two said Thursday.

The settlement came Monday while a Los Angeles Superior Court jury was deliberating the men’s civil suit charging Bullock’s with malicious prosecution, false imprisonment and false arrest, said Woodland Hills attorney Robert L. Diamond.

Diamond said the suit grew out of an October, 1979, incident in which his clients, Hassan Danesh, 25, and Danesh’s nephew, Saeed Taghipour, 24, were detained by company security personnel at Bullock’s Northridge Fashion Square store.

The two men, who now live in San Francisco where they work as electrical engineers, were trying on pants in the store when they decided to return home to pick up some money to make a purchase.

The two men also wanted to get a pair of trousers they had left at home--pants that Taghipour had purchased several months earlier and did not fit properly.

Later that day, the two returned with the pants and a purchase receipt in a crumpled bag.

Diamond said the two were accosted by a Bullock’s security guard who had been “suspicious from the beginning” because “they looked like a couple of minority teen-agers.”

“Danesh was thrown against a wall and handcuffed by (store) security guards,” Diamond said. “Neither of them knew what was happening to them.”

Bullock’s officials did not accept the men’s explanation and pressed charges, Diamond said. According to Diamond, criminal charges against Taghipour were dismissed shortly before the scheduled criminal trial in April, 1980, and Danesh was found not guilty after his trial

Although the two subsequently have successfully begun careers in their field, the charges harmed Danesh, who, a student at Cal State, Northridge, at the time, was concerned about the criminal proceedings and the possibility of being deported to their native Iran, Diamond said. He was forced to drop out of school and to sell his car to meet court costs.

Diamond said he and his clients were at first willing to settle for $30,000, but Bullock’s attorneys refused at pretrial settlement conferences.

It was only after Bullock’s officials saw the case go to trial and realized that they were not going to succeed in their argument that “these two were conspiring for $32 trousers” that the store’s lawyers offered the $250,000 payment, Diamond said.

A spokeswoman for Bullock’s said Thursday that corporate officials were not immediately available for comment. Danesh and Taghipour could not be reached for comment.