An Alabama couple filed a nearly $15 million federal lawsuit claiming Tennessee authorities unjustly took their children from them after they were arrested on DUI and child abuse charges they alleged stemmed from insufficient evidence.

Nicholas and Elizabeth Frye said it took them nine months to regain the custody of their two children, according to the lawsuit they filed Tuesday against the city of Sevierville, the Sevierville Police Department, three Sevierville police officers and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.

The suit, which accuses the defendants of violating the parents’ and children’s rights against illegal seizure, among other claims, seeks $14.98 million.

A spokesman for Sevierville said the city “does not generally comment in regard to ongoing litigation.”

On Feb. 24, 2024, the Fryes were at a Tennessee resort celebrating one of their children’s seventh birthday when Elizabeth Frye slipped and fell on concrete. The family then headed to the Walmart in Sevierville to pick up medical supplies.

After exiting the parking lot, the lawsuit claimed, Sevierville Officer Laura Franklin stopped the family’s car for “no justifiable reason sounding in reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”

Franklin, the lawsuit claimed, accused the Fryes “of being intoxicated and/or impaired,” and the parents “explained the situation and denied any level of intoxication or impairment.”

Officers Jacob Rademacher and Camden Davis helped Franklin helped Franklin test the parents’ sobriety.

The lawsuit claimed blood was taken from Nicholas Frye but it was not an immediate test to determine if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol “as the ultimate blood results for Nicholas Frye show the absence of drugs and alcohol in their system at the time of arrest or otherwise that would show probable cause that Nicholas Frye was intoxicated.”

Yet probable cause was determined to exist and both parents were arrested, the lawsuit alleged.

Franklin arrested the parents on numerous charges, according to the lawsuit, “including DUI, public intoxication, child abuse and neglect and aggravated child abuse and neglect.”

After taking the parents into custody, Franklin or another Sevierville officer notified the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services while the Fryes’ children were taken to police headquarters “where they were detained until their grandmother arrived from Alabama,” the lawsuit claimed.

A Tennessee DCS agent allegedly prevented the Fryes from seeing their children and took their custody away “without any evidentiary basis and without probable cause.”

“From Feb. 25, 2024, it took more than nine months for the Frye parents to regain custody of their minor children,” the lawsuit stated.

The Fryes and their children, according to the lawsuit, are undergoing mental health treatment for their “significant mental and emotional anguish.

While the parents “suffered deleterious effects to their reputations,” the children have had similar struggles in school and have fear of police officers and government officials, the lawsuit claimed.