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Police - From: 1980 To: 1984

This page lists 39 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Beard v Wood [1980] RTR 454
1980


Road Traffic, Police
The court discussed the power of a constable to stop a driver. Held: Provided the officer was acting in good faith the statutory powers given to him he need have no grounds for stopping a driver. Nothing in the section required the prosecutor to show that a constable in uniform acting in the execution of his duty under that section was acting under some common law power for he derived his duty and his powers from the terms of section 159 itself. Since the facts established that the defendant, when driving a vehicle on a road, was required to stop by a uniformed constable not acting capriciously, the defendant, seemingly, had no answer to the charge.
Road Traffic Act 1972 159
1 Citers


 
Baker v Oxford [1980] RTR 315
1980


Police
The court considered the distinction between 'belief' and 'suspicion' when powers of arrest are exercised.
1 Citers


 
Albert v Lavin Unreported
1980
QBD
Hodgson J
Police, Crime
The defendant (A) and the prosecutor (L), an off duty constable not in uniform, awaited a bus. A pushed past the queue, whose members objected. L stood in his way. A pushed past onto the step of the bus, turned, grabbed L's lapel and made to hit him. L in self defence pulled A from the bus and away from the queue. A again tried to hit L, who said he would arrest him unless he stopped struggling, but A struck the constable several times and the constable arrested him for assaulting a constable in the execution of his duty. Before the justices, the defendant contended that L had not been acting in the execution of his duty. The magistrates convicted A because, given the reactions of the other members of the queue when the defendant pushed past, L had reasonably expected a breach of the peace to be about to take place and so he had been entitled to use reasonable force to prevent the breach of the peace. Held: A constable could detain a man against his will without arresting him. The court addressed the question whether the defendant knew or should have known that L was a constable.
Hodgson J said: "It is however clear law that a police officer, reasonably believing that a breach of the peace is about to take place, is entitled to take such steps as are necessary to prevent it, including the reasonable use of force: King v Hodges [1974] Crim LR 424 and Piddington v Bates [1961] 1 WLR 162. If those steps include physical restraint of someone then that restraint is not an unlawful detention but a reasonable use of force. It is a question of fact and degree when a restraint has continued for so long that there must be either a release or an arrest, but on the facts found in this case it seems to me to be clear that that point had not been reached. Obviously where a constable is restraining someone to prevent a breach of the peace he must release (or arrest) him as soon as the restrained person no longer presents a danger to the peace. In this case the justices found that the defendant continued in breach of the peace up to the time when he assaulted the constable."
1 Cites

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Farrell (Formerly McLaughlin) v The Secretary of State for Defence [1980] 1 WLR 172; [1980] 1 All ER 166
1980
HL
Viscount Dilhorne, Lord Edmund-Davies
Litigation Practice, Police
The purpose of pleadings is to enable the opposing party to know the case against him. Lord Edmund-Davies said that: "It has become fashionable in these days to attach decreasing importance to pleadings, and it is beyond doubt that there have been times when an insistence on complete compliance with their technicalities put justice at risk, and, indeed, may on occasion have led to its being defeated. But pleadings continue to play an essential part in civil actions." and "It is to define the issues and inform the parties in advance what they have to meet and at the same time enable them to take the necessary steps to deal with it."
Viscount Dilhorne said that section 3(1) of the 1967 Act may provide a defence to a civil action for assault or battery.
Criminal Law Act 1967 3(1)
1 Citers



 
 McIlkenny v Chief Constable of the West Midlands; CA 1980 - [1980] QB 283; [1980] 2 All ER 227; [1980] 2 WLR 689

 
 Regina v Howell (Errol); CACD 1981 - [1982] 1 QB 416; [1982] QB 416; [1981] 73 Crim App R 31

 
 McVeigh, O'Neill and Evans v United Kingdom; ECHR 1981 - (1983) 5 EHRR 71; (1981) 25 DR 15; 8022/77; 8025/77; 8027/77; [1981] ECHR 11; (1982) DR 25

 
 Swales v Cox; CA 1981 - [1981] QB 849; [1981] 1 All ER 1115; [1981] 2 WLR 814
 
Lindley v Rutter [1981] QB 128
1981
CA
Donaldson LJ
Police, Torts - Other
The defendant had been taken into police custody upon arrest for disorderly behaviour. Police officers, acting in accordance with what they believed to be standing orders to search every female prisoner, in the face of a refusal by the defendant to be searched, searched her and in so doing removed her brassiere. Held: Persons detained in police custody must not be searched unless there is a "very good reason" for doing so
1 Citers


 
Neilson v Laugharne [1981] QB 736; [1981] 1 All ER 829; [1981] 2 WLR 537
1981
CA
Lord Denning MR, Oliver and O'Connor LJJ
Police, Information
A claim was made against the Chief Constable of Lancashire for trespass, wrongful imprisonment, false arrest and assault. The Chief Constable's response to the letter before action was to write to the plaintiff's solicitors stating he had decided to call for an investigation under section 49 of the Police Act 1964, that the investigating officer would be contacting them and the plaintiff, and that the question of compensation would be considered at the conclusion of the investigation. The defendant claimed that, save for the plaintiff's own statement, statements taken from the plaintiff and a number of other people were protected on public interest grounds and by litigation privilege. The affidavit in support of the public interest claim was by the deputy chief constable. That in support of the claim of litigation privilege was by a common law clerk who stated that the dominant purpose of the investigating officer's inquiry was to obtain evidence for the defence to the action. Held: The claim to public interest immunity succeeded but that to litigation privilege did not. The court preferred to rely on the Chief Constable's initial letter rather than the clerk's affidavit. A police investigation is not part of the administration of justice.
Oliver LJ stated that the Chief Constable's letter to the plaintiff's solicitors demonstrated that the dominant purpose of the investigation was the statutory purpose and that had its dominant purpose been to provide material for the threatened legal proceedings it was a very tricky letter indeed because it in effect invited the prospective plaintiff to make a statement to the representative of the prospective defendant under the guise of carrying out a statutory inquiry.
1 Citers


 
Lambert v Roberts [1981] 72 Cr App R 223
1981
QBD

Land, Police
Police officers came into a garden to obtain a breath test. There had been repeated statements by the owner of the premises that the officers, who were on the driveway of his house, were on private property and that he believed the police had no right to administer a breath test in those circumstances. Held: The officers came onto the garden by virtue of an implied licence, but (Donaldson LJ) ". . . it is a licence which is revocable without prior notice. In the present case the justices have found that the defendant's statement that he was on private property and that the police officers were trespassing was such a notice. I am quite unable to say that this was wrong, although an alternative view of the defendant's conduct, taken as a whole, is that he was simply disputing the right of the police officers to require a breath test on private property but was not effectively revoking their licence."
1 Citers



 
 Morris v Beardmore; HL 1981 - [1981] AC 446; [1980] 2 All ER 753; [1980] RTR 321; (1980) 71 Cr App R 256; [1980] 3 WLR 283; (1980) 144 JP 331

 
 Regina v Uxbridge Justices, ex parte Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis; CA 1981 - [1981] 1 QB 829
 
X v Germany 8819/79; [1981] ECHR 8; (1981) 24 DR 158
19 Mar 1981
ECHR

Human Rights, Police
The Commission had regard to the fact that the purpose for which the children were taken to the police headquarters and kept there for about two hours was to question them, not to arrest or detain them. This led to the conclusion that the action in question did not constitute a deprivation of liberty in the sense of article 5(1).
European Convention on Human Rights 5(1)
1 Citers

[ Bailii ]
 
Knightley v Johns and others [1981] EWCA Civ 6; [1982] 1 All ER 851; [1982] 1 WLR 349
27 Mar 1981
CA
Stephenson, Dunn LJJ, Sir David Cairns
Police, Negligence, Road Traffic
There had been an accident in a tunnel, blocking it. The defendant inspector ordered a traffic constable to ride into the tunnel on his motorcycle against the flow of traffic. The constable crashed and sought damages for negligence against the inspector. Held: The inspector was liable in negligence. One police officer can have a duty of care to another.
1 Cites

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[ Bailii ]
 
Hunter v Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police [1982] AC 529; [1981] 3 WLR 906; [1981] UKHL 13; [1981] 3 All ER 727
19 Nov 1981
HL
Lord Diplock, Lord Russell of Killowen, Lord Keith of Kinkel, Lord Roskill, Lord Brandon
Legal Professions, Police, Estoppel
An attempt was made to open up in a civil action, allegations of assaults by the police prior to the making of confessions which had been disposed of in a voir dire in the course of a criminal trial. Held: This was a collateral attack amounting to an abuse of process, not because of the the limits of police immunity, but to provide an effective immunity. The purpose of the action was not in truth to obtain damages from the Chief Constable but to undermine the conviction. Unless debarred from doing so, defendants convicted after a full and fair trial who failed to appeal successfully, may challenge their convictions by suing advocates who appeared for them. Public policy requires a defendant, who seeks to challenge his conviction, to do so directly by seeking to appeal his conviction.
Lord Diplock said: "My Lords, this is a case about abuse of the process of the High Court. It concerns the inherent power which any court of justice must possess to prevent misuse of its procedure in a way which, although not inconsistent with the literal application of its procedural rules, would nevertheless be manifestly unfair to a party to litigation before it, or would otherwise bring the administration of justice into disrepute among right-thinking people. The circumstances in which abuse of process can arise are very varied; those which give rise to the instant appeal must surely be unique. It would, in my view, be most unwise if this House were to use this occasion to say anything that might be taken as limiting to fixed categories the kinds of circumstances in which the court has a duty (I disavow the word discretion) to exercise this salutary power."
. . And "The abuse of process which the instant case exemplifies is the initiation of proceedings in a court of justice for the purpose of mounting a collateral attack upon a final decision against the intending plaintiff which has been made by another court of competent jurisdiction in previous proceedings in which the intending plaintiff had a full opportunity of contesting the decision in the court by which it was made."
Civil Evidence Act 1968 11
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[ Bailii ]

 
 Albert v Lavin; HL 3-Dec-1981 - [1982] AC 546; [1981] 3 WLR 955; [1981] 3 All ER 878; [1981] UKHL 6
 
Solomon v Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1982] Crim LR 606
1982


Police
Public policy and the doctrine of "ex turpi culpa non oritur actio" preclude a thief from recovery of items from the police.
1 Citers



 
 Thomas v Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago; PC 1982 - [1982] AC 113; (1981) 32 WIR 375; [1981] 3 WLR 601

 
 Chief Constable of the North Wales Police v Evans; HL 1982 - [1982] 1 WLR 1155; (1982) 3 All ER 141; [1982] UKHL 10

 
 Regina v Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, Ex parte Central Electricity Generating Board; CA 1982 - [1982] QB 458; [1981] 3 WLR 967; [1981] 3 All ER 826

 
 Regina v Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall ex parte CEGB; CA 1982 - [1982] QB 458
 
Snook v Mannion [1982] RTR 321; [1982] Crim LR 601
1982
QBD

Road Traffic, Police
The police officer refused to leave premises after being told to 'Fuck off'. Held: Whether such words amounted to a withdrawal of the officer's licence to be on the land was a question of fact in the circumstances.
1 Citers


 
Bentley v Brudzinski (1982) CLR 825; [1982] 75 Cr App R 217
1982
QBD

Police, Torts - Other
A police officer arrived at a situation. Answering a signal from a colleague, he placed his hand on the shoulder of a man in order to attract his attention. The man the hit the officer and was charged with assaulting the officer in the execution of his duty. He was acquitted. Held: The acquittal was upheld. The officer who was assaulted was acting as agent of a colleague and, unknown to the officer assaulted, that first officer was acting outside the scope of his duty.
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Reynolds v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [1982] EWCA Civ 7; [1982] Crim LR 600
18 May 1982
CA
Waller, O'Connor LJJ, Sir George Baker
Police, Torts - Other, Damages
The plaintiff had been awarded £12,000 damages for false imprisonment by the Commissiner's officers. Officers had suspected the existence of a repeat arsonist operating an insurance fraud. The plaintiff's husband owned one of the properties. That was the sole ground for her arrest. The judge had found no ground for reasonable suspicion of her. Held: The grounds were not capable of amounting to a proper suspicion. The damages award was higher than might be awarded by others but was within the proper range.
1 Citers

[ Bailii ]
 
Regina v Police Complaints Board ex parte Madden and Rhone [1983] 1 WLR 447
1983

McNeill J
Police, Natural Justice
Double jeopardy, properly understood, is best described in the phrase "No man should be tried twice for the same offence". The court emphasised the word "tried".
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Wills v Bowley [1983] 1 AC 57
1983
HL
Lord Bridge of Harwich
Constitutional, Police
The section required a constable to “take into custody without warrant, and forthwith convey before a Justice, any person who in his view” commits a range of offences. Held: It was to be construed in such a way as not unduly to narrow the police's powers of arrest. Proper consideration should be had to the maintenance of public order and other aspects of the public interest and powers conferred by Parliament should not lightly be rendered ineffective. Lord Bridge of Harwich: “If a power of arrest in flagrante delicto is to be effective at all, the person who exercises it needs protection,....so far as the law can give it”. Section 28 of the 1847 Act protected the police, if they honestly if mistakenly believed on reasonable grounds that they have seen an offence being committed. (Majority decision)
Town Police Clauses Act l847 47
1 Citers


 
Marshall v Osmond [1983] 2 All ER 367; [1983] 1 QB 1034; [1983] 3 WLR 13
1983
CA
Sir John Donaldson MR, Dillon LJ, Sir Denis Buckley
Police, Negligence, Road Traffic
The plaintiff was passenger in a stolen car seeking to escape the police as they chased. The car was stopped, the plaintiff got out of the car, and was hit by a police car. He sought damages. Held: His appeal against dismissal of his claim was dismissed. A police officer in such circumstances owed the same duty of care to the plaintiff as he would to anybody else. He was to exercise such care and skill as was reasonable in the circumstances. Though the officer might have made errors of judgment, he had not in fact been negligent. Though the claimant had helped to create the circumstances which gave rise to the accident, the defence of volenti non fit injuria did not apply. "I think that the duty owed by a police driver to the suspect is, as Mr Spokes, on behalf of the plaintiff, has contended, the same duty as that owed to anyone else, namely to exercise such care and skill as is reasonable in all the circumstances. The vital words in that proposition of law are 'in all the circumstances', and of course one of the circumstances was that the plaintiff bore all the appearance of having been somebody engaged in a criminal activity for which there was a power of arrest."
and "As I see it, what happened was that this police officer pursued a line in steering his car which would, in the ordinary course of events, have led to his ending up sufficiently far away from the Cortina to clear its open door. He was driving on a gravelly surface at night in what were no doubt stressful circumstances. There is no doubt that he made an error of judgment because, in the absence of an error of judgment, there would have been no contact between the cars. I am far from satisfied on the evidence that the police officer was negligent."
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 Hart v Chief Constable of Kent; QBD 1983 - [1983] RTR 484
 
Brazil v Chief Constable of Surrey [1983] 3 All E R 537; [1983] 1 WLR 1155
1983
QBD
Robert Goff LJ, McNeill J
Police, Crime, Human Rights, Torts - Other
The appellant had been convicted of assaulting a female police officer in the course of her duty when attempting to search her at a police station under section 23(2). She said that the police officers had not been acting in the execution of their duty because a search imposed a restraint on a person's freedom and also an interference with the right to privacy under Article 8(1) of the ECHR. Held: A police constable was not normally entitled to carry out such a search without first telling the victim of the search why it was necessary in the particular case. The reason for a police officer exercising a search is to allow the person to be searched to object that the reason is inadequate: Counsel: "If persons do not know why they are being searched, they have no basis on which to form a view whether or not that search is justified in the circumstances." Robert Goff LJ: "I can see no difficulty in general terms in the officer explaining to the person no doubt in the simplest and most ordinary language, why the search is proposed. In my judgment, generally speaking, that ought to be done. Consistent with the speech of Viscount Simon in Christie v Leachinsky [1947] AC 573, there may well be circumstances where the giving of such reasons would not be necessary. To give an example, the circumstances may be such that it is perfectly obvious why a search is necessary. If so, it would be otiose for the officer concerned to give an explanation." and "In general terms, the citizens of this country should not have their freedom interfered with unless it would be lawful to do so, and, in my judgment, an explanation should generally be given to persons why a personal search is to be carried out."
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 23(2)
1 Cites



 
 Holgate-Mohammed v Duke; HL 1984 - [1984] AC 437; [1984] 1 AC 437; [1984] 2 WLR 660; [1984] 1 All ER 1054; [1984] 2 WLR 660

 
 Halliday v Nevill; 1984 - (1984) 155 CLR 1
 
Chief Constable of Hampshire v A Ltd [1984] CLY 2650; [1985] QB 132
1984
CA
Oliver LJ
Police
The court explained Chief Constable of Kent -v- V: "jurisdiction to grant an injunction on the application of the Chief Constable in that case existed only if he could be found to have a sufficient interest in making the application, and they appear broadly to have been in agreement as to the foundation of the interest which they held to exist and to be sufficient. That was found to be in the duty of the Chief Constable to seize and detain goods stolen or unlawfully obtained and to restore them to their true owner, a similar duty being applied by analogy to intangible assets such as a credit in a bank account."
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 McKee v Chief Constable for Northern Ireland; HL 1984 - [1985] 1 All ER 1; [1984] NI 169; [1984] 1 WLR 1358

 
 Collins v Wilcock; QBD 1984 - [1984] 3 All ER 374; [1984] 1 WLR 1172; (1984) 79 Cr App R 229; [1984] Crim LR 481; (1984) 148 JP 692
 
Mercer v Oldham [1984] Crim LR 232
1984
QBD

Magistrates, Police, Costs
The respondent had recovered his car from the police via a complaint to the magistrates, having lent it to his brother-in-law, who had used it in a burglary. The magistrates found that he had not known of the intended use. The police had taken no steps to ascertain his state of knowledge, and the magistrates ordered the police to pay his costs. The police appealed by case stated against the order for costs. Held. The appeal was dismissed. The conduct of the police justified the order. In the course of judgment the Court said: "In matters of this kind, it was of the utmost assistance to the justices that the police should be present at court, both to indicate whether or not they objected to the order being made, and to test the evidence of a claimant. In such circumstances, the justices would normally make no order for costs. But they did have a discretion, and if they considered that the police had gone beyond the usual rule merely assisting the justices, and actively opposed the order, then there was no reason why the justices should not, in the exercise of their discretion, order the police to pay costs. That was clearly what happened in the present case."

 
Johnson v Whitehouse [1984] RTR 47
1984

Nolan J
Road Traffic, Police
There is a relevant distinction between suspecting and believing in a police officer's mind: "the dictionary definitions of those words . . of course, do show that the word 'believe' connotes a greater degree of certainty, or perhaps a smaller degree of uncertainty, than the word 'suspect'."
1 Citers


 
Arias and Others v Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police and Another (1984) SJ (128) 784
1 Aug 1984
CA
Kerr, May LJJ
Litigation Practice, Police
A police officer searched premises under a warrant seizing documents of a trust corporation managed by the occupier. The trustees sought return of the documents or, alternatively, copies of them. The police believed that the documents were evidence of a widespread fraud and that the documents were crucial to their investigations and that the investigation might be "hampered" and disclosure might provide "an opportunity to fabricate evidence". The police claim succeeded. The trustees appealed Held: The appeal succeeded. May LJ giving the leading judgment said: "For my part I respectfully do not think that in that passage from his speech in IRC v. Rossminster . . which I have just read, Lord Diplock was intending to go as far as that. It seems to me quite apparent from his reference to 'other evidence' on the relevant application being 'strong enough to justify the inference that no reasonable person could have thought so' necessarily contemplates that to which Lord Morris referred in his speech in Conway v. Rimmer . . namely that in all these cases where there are conflicting public interests the ultimate decision as to which is to prevail must depend upon the exercise of discretion by the judge before whom the relevant application is made, that is to say by him conducting an appropriate balancing exercise of the one public interest against the other, and of the harm which would result from denying one public interest against the harm which would result from denying the other. That that is the duty of the court in these circumstances is, I think, quite apparent also from such cases as D v. NSPCC. . . In that context I quote paragraphs 19 and 21 of the learned judge's judgment: "The second defendant --that is, the detective constable -- has sworn that all the documents are crucial to his investigation and the reason why copies should not be provided he goes on to say, is because if they are disclosed at this stage there is a future real danger that his investigations may be hampered and an opportunity provided to fabricate evidence.
I am not satisfied that the evidence I have considered is strong enough to justify the inference that the Second Defendant has no reasonable grounds for his belief and accordingly this application for a mandatory injunction is refused."
It will be immediately apparent that the learned judge's reference to 'evidence' and 'inference' in paragraph 21 stems from the dictum of Lord Diplock in the Rossminster case which I have quoted . . "For my part I accept that in the factual context of the present case a claim to a public interest to retain documents so that criminal investigations may be properly prosecuted is at least arguable. I also accept, however, Mr. Purnell's submission that in this particular case the claim to that public interest immunity goes very much further than it has in any other case. He submits, for instance, that it would not be difficult in almost any case --particularly any case involving documentary material --for the prosecuting authority to come along and depose genuinely on affidavit to their fear that if the documents were disclosed the alleged offenders might seek to fabricate defences. This shows, he submits, how wide is the claim for immunity in this appeal.
For the reasons which I have tried to give, I think at the end of the day, in these cases where there are two conflicting public interests involved and one cannot at once say that in the particular circumstances one or the other must clearly prevail, it is a question for the court to perform the sort of balancing exercise to which I have referred, setting the one public interest against the other, the benefit of which will accrue from the maintenance of the one against the benefit which will accrue from the maintenance of the other, and also the harm which will accrue from not allowing one or the other to succeed . . Whilst I bear in mind what Lord Morris said in his speech in Conway v. Rimmer . . that one must remember that it may sometimes be difficult for a person claiming this particular public interest privilege to condescend to substantial particulars for the very reason that, if he does, he may give the whole game away at that stage, I am satisfied that the evidence in the two affidavits to which I have referred, when properly and realistically analysed, is really only speculation. What the officer says, for instance, in the most recent affidavit is that, if the information were to be made available, 'it would enable them, if so minded, to attempt to cover their tracks by the production of other documents based on the information contained in the documents which I hold.
As I have said, I take the view that in all these cases what the court has to do is to conduct the appropriate balancing exercise. I would not wish it to be thought that in every case something more than the mere statement of belief on reasonable grounds on the part of the relevant police officer or revenue officer is required. Each of these cases, in which this conflict of public interest arises has to be decided on its own facts having regard to all the circumstances of the case as they then appear to the court. Doing the balancing exercise in the present case, however, bearing in mind the view that I take of the speculative character of the evidence proffered on behalf of the respondents, I am driven to the conclusion that the fact that these documents are the appellants' own documents, and that they are only asking for copies of them to enable the trust business to be carried on, even if they may wish to prepare their defence to any criminal prosecution which may hereafter be instituted, leads to the balance coming down clearly in favour of the appellants . . In my judgment, to make good that claim would require substantially more cogent evidence than is available in the affidavits sworn by the detective constable in the instant case."
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 Malone v The United Kingdom; ECHR 2-Aug-1984 - 8691/79; (1984) 7 EHRR 14; [1984] ECHR 10; [1985] ECHR 5
 
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