Actor Angie Harmon has filed a lawsuit against Instacart and one of its former shoppers who shot her dog in March while delivering groceries to her home in North Carolina.
The lawsuit filed late last week in Mecklenburg County seeks to hold the customer and Instacart liable for charges including trespassing, gross negligence, emotional distress and invasion of privacy. It accuses Instacart of negligent hiring, supervision, retention and misrepresentation. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages, to be determined at trial.
Instacart says the shopper has since been permanently banned from its platform.
Harmon is known for her work on TV shows including “Law & Order” and “Rizolli & Isles.” She told “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired Wednesday that it was “so unfathomable to think that there's someone in your driveway who just fired a gun.”
“I don't think Instacart is responsible for any of this,” Harmon said in the interview. “This should not have happened.”
According to the complaint, Harmon ordered an Instacart grocery delivery from a store in Charlotte on March 30. The Instacart app showed a customer named Merle with a profile photo of an older woman, with whom Harmon believed she was exchanging text messages about her order, the lawsuit says.
Later that day, Harmon was upstairs filling her squirrel feeders when a “tall and intimidating younger man,” and not an older woman, showed up to deliver the groceries, the lawsuit said.
Harmon said she heard a shot and ran outside. She discovered her dog, Oliver, had been shot and saw the delivery person put a gun down the front of his pants, according to the complaint. Her teenage daughters, who had already been outside, were “in distress,” it said. The dog died in the vet's office.
The customer told police he shot the dog after it attacked him, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police told the news media, adding that they had not filed criminal charges.
In an Instagram post last month about the encounter, Harmon wrote that the customer “didn't have a scratch or bite and his pants weren't torn either.”
Instacart says it immediately suspended the customer after receiving notice of the shooting and later permanently removed him. The company says it conducts extensive background checks on shoppers, prohibits them from carrying weapons and has anti-fraud measures in place, including periodically requiring them to take a photo of themselves to ensure the person shopping matches the photo in our file.
“Our thoughts remain with Ms. Harmon and her family following this disturbing incident,” Instacart said in a statement. “While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we do not tolerate violence of any kind and the shopper account has been permanently deactivated from our platform.”
