Theslet Benoir and Clemene Bastien, owners of Eben-Ezer Haitian Food Truck LLC, are suing the town of Parksley, Virginia and council member Henry Nicholson for allegedly violating their constitutional rights. The owners claim that Nicholson cut their truck water line and told them to « go back to their own country, » according to a report by Wavy.com.
According to the lawsuit, Nicholson first complained that the food truck was competing with local businesses. He then claimed that the truck was illegally hooked to the sewer system and caused a pipe to burst, so he cut the trucks’ water line, which caused about $1,300 in damage.
« They’re right that at one point a pipe did burst, but it had nothing to do with our clients’ food truck, it’s not why they cut the water pipe, » Justin Pearson of Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm, said in the report. He also said that Nicholson had confronted Benoirt and Bastien earlier that day about their food truck competing with local businesses.
« If the government had to cut the water pipe, Councilmember Nicholson is not the person to do that, » Pearson said in the report. « The government in charge of the sewer system is the Accomack County Department of Health, and later that same day after the water pipe was cut, they told my clients that it should not have been cut. So the town can come up with whatever excuse it wants to … it’s based unfortunately because it didn’t want competition with restaurants, and frankly didn’t like the fact that my clients were from Haiti. »
The owners also said that later, a town attorney sent them a letter saying that they were committing criminal misdemeanors for each day they operated their food truck due to zoning codes and threatened them with jail time and fines.
The lawsuit seeks nominal and compensatory damages and an injunction to allow the food truck to reopen.
