Herd v Weardale Steel Coal and Coke Co Ltd: CA 1913

The court granted the appeal against the success of a false imprisonment claim by an employee of a coal-mining company, whose complaint was based on his employers’ refusal to comply with his request to take him to the surface, after he had wrongfully refused to do work, until more than two hours after his request had been made.
Buckley LJ said that as to the contention that the employee had a claim in contract, he rejected it on the basis that, while there was an implied term that the employee would be brought to the surface, it had not been breached, since the plaintiff had been brought to the surface by the end of his shift.
As to the claim for false imprisonment: ‘What kept [the plaintiff] from getting to the surface was not any act which the defendants did, but the fact that he was at the bottom of a deep shaft, and there was no means of getting out other than the particular means which belonged to his employers and over which the plaintiff had contractual rights and which at that moment were not in operation.’
If there had been an hour’s delay in conveying him to the surface at the end of his shift, merely on the grounds of the employer’s convenience, the employee ‘would be entitled to damages for breach of contract’. He then asked ‘would there be any false imprisonment?’ and answered: ‘In my opinion, there would not. The master has not imprisoned the man. He has not enabled him to get out as the under the contract he ought to have done, but he has done no act compelling him to remain there . . to my mind [the employers] did not imprison [the employee] because they did not keep him [in the mine]; they only abstained from giving him facilities for getting away.’
Hamilton LJ said: ‘I say nothing as to how the case would have stood if force had been threatened to the plaintiff . . The fact is that he remained at the bottom of the shaft simply because the power was not turned on at the top of the shaft to raise the cage. Could that be held to have been an imprisonment?’

Judges:

Buckley and Hamilton LJJ

Citations:

[1913] 3 KB 77

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

Appeal fromHerd v Weardale Steel Coal and Coke Co Ltd HL 30-Jun-1914
The claimant, a miner, said that his work was dangerous, and threw down his tools. He now sought damages saying that his employer had falsely imprisoned him by failing to bring him to the surface until the end of his shift.
Held: The . .
CitedPrison Officers Association v Iqbal CA 4-Dec-2009
The claimant, a prisoner, alleged false imprisonment. The prison officers had taken unlawful strike action leaving him to be confined within his cell and unable to be involved in his normal activities. In view of the strike, a governor’s order had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Torts – Other

Updated: 11 May 2022; Ref: scu.381840