Parents wrongly arrested on trip lose custody of kids for 9 months, Tennessee suit says

A couple was falsely accused of DUI charges and arrested during a family vacation, causing them to lose custody of their children for nine months, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Tennessee.

The couple’s attorney told McClatchy News the charges were dropped and their records expunged, and now they’re suing various agencies in Tennessee for nearly $15 million.

Several individual officers with the Sevierville Police Department are named in the lawsuit, in addition to the police department itself, the city of Sevierville and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

A spokesperson for the police department told McClatchy News that “the city of Sevierville does not generally comment on pending litigation.”

DCS didn’t immediately comment on the lawsuit March 4.

In February 2024, the Alabama family was staying at a resort in Sevier County for their youngest child’s seventh birthday when the mom slipped on some stairs and got hurt, according to the lawsuit filed Feb. 25 in the Eastern District of Tennessee.

The husband drove the family to Walmart to get some supplies, and as they were leaving, an officer with the Sevierville Police Department pulled them over, the complaint says.

The officer accused of the parents of being impaired, but they denied it.

The lawsuit says the officer had no probable cause to arrest the parents on charges of DUI, public intoxication, child abuse and neglect, and aggravated child abuse and neglect, because the “parents were not intoxicated at any material time complained of.”

The husband’s blood test would later “show the absence of drugs and alcohol,” but the family says officers didn’t conduct other tests that would have shown “on a near immediate basis” that the parents weren’t intoxicated, according to the filing.

Officers contacted the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, and the children were taken away from their parents until their grandmother could come get them from Alabama, the lawsuit says.

An Alabama child welfare agency got involved as well, preventing the couple from seeing their children, and the parents went through a roughly nine-month battle before regaining custody of their kids, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit accuses authorities of violating the family’s 14th Amendment rights, saying there was no probable cause to justify the “illegal arrests and illegal removal” of the kids from their parents’ custody.

“It is beyond a doubt that an officer who seizes four individuals — two (2) parents and two (2) children — without probable cause or reasonable suspicion has not been properly trained, managed, supervised, etc,” the lawsuit says.

The parents say their reputations have suffered, and their whole family has experienced “mental and emotional anguish.”

Sevierville is about a 30-mile drive southeast from Knoxville.