A police department allegedly ruined a local Subway restaurant in Layton, Utah by spreading false accusations against an employee of the sandwich shop, and now the Subway's owners are making them pay.

Subway franchise co-owners Dallas Buttars and Kristin Myers, both of whom own the location the events allegedly occurred at, have sued the Layton City Police Department as well as one of their officers for disseminating false information about their restaurant to local news stations. The officer and the police department publicly went on record that an employee had spiked another cop's drink with methamphetamine and marijuana, causing him to feel ill.

According to the suit, this happened after the officer in question ordered a sandwich and soda in the franchise's drive-thru, took a sip of the drink, and began to feel sick. An ion scan test of the soda was later performed and tested positive for the aforementioned drugs. However, this test is known for producing a lot of false positives and is inadmissible in court cases today, meaning that it shouldn't have been trusted.

Despite that, officers went to the Subway anyway, searching the entire premises for drugs. After failing to find any, they still arrested the accused staffer on felony charges of "surreptitious administration of a substance." A cop later went on local news and gave the reporter a ton of false information, including that the officer had in fact been drugged (urine tests taken before the interview proved otherwise), that surveillance footage showed the drink being spiked (it didn't), and that the action was committed because the employee saw the cop's car in the drive-thru, suggesting a prejudice against police without any backing.

As a result of the news segment, Buttars and Myers claim to have lost over $300,000 in business as customers and even the local schools stopped buying sandwiches from them. By the time charges were dropped against the original employee and tests were able to confirm that there were actually no drugs in the lemonade, the damage had already been done.

Thus, in retribution for the defamatory interview that was given by the police department, and for failure to disclose the falsehoods declared during that news segment until much later, the franchise owners are looking for an unnamed amount of damages for the unjust persecution of their restaurant and the sales they lost as a result. We'll have to wait and see whether the court rules in favor of these maltreated franchise owners or not.