‘Got Exactly What He Asked for’: Pennsylvania Man Whose Business Closed After His Racist Rant Was Caught on Video Faces Uphill Legal Battle After Claiming He Was Filmed Without Consent
The attorneys for the people being sued by a Pennsylvania restaurant owner, who was filmed repeatedly spewing the N-word in a hateful rant, are challenging some of the claims the plaintiff outlined in his complaint.
Jon Spanos, a restaurant owner and former member of the Penn State York Advisory Board, recently filed a lawsuit against three people — two of whom are family members — alleging that they conspired to tarnish his reputation by posting a video of him making the racist remarks.
The rant was filmed during a confrontation with two of the defendants last October. A 40-second clip posted on X under the account @YorkpaRacist catches Spanos yelling, “Your half n— brother,” multiple times and saying, “I am a racist.”
In Spanos’ suit, he states that he “did not give his consent for the conversation to be recorded by any third party.”
However, attorneys for Anastasia Marros and his wife, Meghan Dundon, both of whom confronted Spanos last year and filmed the encounter, say their clients were well within their rights to record Spanos.
And in the video, Spanos can be heard telling Dundon to “Keep videoing.”
“Catching him saying a racist comment, threats against her husband. Recording in a public space with concerns of physical violence ensuing – that’s the only thing she did,” Kathryn Nonas-Hunter, attorney for Dundon, told the York Dispatch.
“The video doesn’t lie,” Farley Holt, attorney for Marros, added. “Anyone who’s foolish enough to act the way he did, in public with absolutely no expectation of privacy — there were other people there. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Spanos ordered this off the extra value menu. He got exactly what he asked for.”
The video drew thousands of views and the attention of local York Township leaders and community members. Spanos publicly apologized for the video, stepped down from his post on the Penn State York Advisory Board, and closed his restaurant, The Paddock, due to threats and employee resignations.
In April, he filed a complaint against his second cousins, Marros and Kostas Sgagias, and Marros’s wife, alleging defamation, civil conspiracy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In the filing, he claimed that the video was the culmination of a years-long “family grudge” launched by Marros.
The complaint states that Marros is friends with the adult sons of Spanos’ wife, Sally, and that he took offense when she divorced her previous husband and remarried Spanos. Since then, Marros has “publicly and privately pledged to ruin” the couple’s lives, according to the suit.
“This family grudge initiated by Marros has led to online disparagement on the social media
platform Facebook, as well as heated, verbal barbs directed at both Dr. Spanos and Mrs.
Spanos at events attended by them, including a family funeral,” the complaint states.
Spanos said Marros and Dundon, who reportedly live in North Carolina, were in town in October 2024 for Sgagias’ wedding. As they were driving to the event, they stopped when they saw Spanos and his wife on the street, and Marros made a “profane physical gesture” at Spanos, which led to an argument between the pair.
Dundon began filming the confrontation, in which Spanos is heard telling Marros, “I don’t have a half n— brother; you do.”
Sgagias wasn’t at the scene of the confrontation. Still, Spanos claimed that he worked with Marros and Dundon, created an anonymous X account, uploaded the video, and intentionally tagged local newspapers, the NAACP, and the Penn State York Advisory Board.
Spanos is seeking $250,000 in damages from each of the defendants.