(Court of Appeal in Ireland) The plaintiff, a nationalist Member of Parliament, sued the defendant for assault and battery. There had been a meeting which was to be held on 7 December 1880. On the day before, a placard appeared summoning local Orangemen to assemble to oppose the meeting. The defendant, who was a justice of the peace for the district, was present at the meeting. He knew of the placard and believed on reasonable and probable grounds that the only way of preventing a breach of the peace when the Orangemen arrived was to order the meeting to separate and disperse. The defendant asked the plaintiff and the other persons who were assembled to disperse and, when they failed to do so, he laid his hand on the plaintiff in order to disperse the meeting.
Held: On a demurrer, if made out, these averments would constitute a sufficient defence to the action for assault and battery. Where it is necessary in order to prevent a breach of the peace, at common law police officers can take action which affects people who are not themselves going to be actively involved in the breach.
Law C said: ‘The question then seems to be reduced to this: assuming the plaintiff and others assembled with him to be doing nothing unlawful, but yet that there were reasonable grounds for the defendant believing, as he did, that there would be a breach of the peace if they continued so assembled, and that there was no other way in which the breach of the peace could be avoided but by stopping and dispersing the plaintiff’s meeting – was the defendant justified in taking the necessary steps to stop and disperse it? In my opinion he was so justified, under the peculiar circumstances stated in the defence, and which for the present must be taken as admitted to be there truly stated. Under such circumstances the defendant was not to defer action until a breach of the peace had actually been committed. His paramount duty was to preserve the peace unbroken, and that, by whatever means were available for the purpose. Furthermore, the duty of a justice of the peace being to preserve the peace unbroken he is, of course, entitled and in part bound, to intervene the moment he has reasonable apprehensions of a breach of the peace being imminent; and therefore, he must in such cases necessarily act on his own reasonable and bona fide belief, as to what is likely to occur. Accordingly in the present case, even assuming that the danger to the public peace arose altogether from the threatened attack of another body on the plaintiff and his friends, still if the defendant believed and had just grounds for believing that the peace could only be preserved by withdrawing the plaintiff and his friends from the attack with which they were threatened, it was, I think, the duty of the defendant to take that course.’
Judges:
Palles CB, Law C
Citations:
(1882) 10 LR Ir 287
Cited by:
Cited – Laporte, Regina (on the application of ) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire HL 13-Dec-2006
The claimants had been in coaches being driven to take part in a demonstration at an air base. The defendant police officers stopped the coaches en route, and, without allowing any number of the claimants to get off, returned the coaches to London. . .
Cited – Austin and Another v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis CA 15-Oct-2007
The claimants appealed dismissal of their claims for false imprisonment and unlawful detention by the respondent in his policing of a demonstration. They had been held within a police cordon in the streets for several hours to prevent the spread of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Police, International
Updated: 01 May 2022; Ref: scu.247478