A man who repeatedly attempted to walk out of Walmart stores without showing his receipts, then sued the company when employees detained him on suspicion of shoplifting, cannot hold Walmart liable for false imprisonment, Colorado’s second-highest court ruled on Thursday.

William Montgomery has filed a deluge of lawsuits in state and federal court alleging the same basic pattern. Montgomery pays for items at Denver-area Walmart stores, walks out carrying the merchandise and declines to provide his receipt when asked. Employees and law enforcement then detain, question and sometimes arrest him.

In siding with Walmart last year in five combined lawsuits, an Arapahoe County judge noted Montgomery had stated he “came to the store and planned on suing” in what Montgomery called “stings.”

“Not only was Montgomery’s conduct sufficient to cause the Walmart employees to believe that his intent was to commit a crime, but he specifically intended that result,” wrote then-District Court Judge Peter F. Michaelson. “Reasonable people acting in good faith under the same or similar circumstances would have reasonable grounds – as did the Walmart employees – to find probable cause existed to detain and question Montgomery.”

Montgomery appealed his loss in all five cases, arguing he never concealed his purchases in a way that would lead store employees to think he was shoplifting. He claimed Walmart acted unlawfully by blocking his exit after he declined to show proof of purchase because it was Montgomery’s “absolute, unequivocal, 100% OBJECTIVE right to not show it, to anybody, ever, PERIOD.”

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals disagreed.

“As a matter of law,” wrote Judge Matthew D. Grove in the June 1 opinion, “for those interactions in which Montgomery was merely asked for his receipt at the exit, he had a reasonable means by which he could exit each of the stores. He simply chose not to avail himself of it.”

Grove also referenced the “shopkeepers’ privilege,” a provision in Colorado law that shields store owners and employees from liability if they have reasonable grounds to detain and question people they suspect of shoplifting. The state Supreme Court has interpreted the law to afford shopkeepers protection even if the detained customer is not ultimately guilty of theft.

Earlier this year, Montgomery told Colorado Politics he has shopped at Walmart hundreds of times with no issue, but sued over the handful of occasions that resulted in his detention.

The Court of Appeals previously sided against Montgomery in a similar lawsuit out of Jefferson County. Another of his unsuccessful lawsuits, stemming from Adams County, is also pending before the appeals court. In March, a federal judge allowed Montgomery’s claims to proceed in part against an Aurora police officer who confiscated items in his pockets during an in-store detention.

The case is Montgomery v. Walmart, Inc. et al.