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Home > Law > Law glossary > Law glossary
false imprisonment
Last modified: Thu Feb 23 16:37:37 2006
To `imprison' someone is to deprive him of his liberty, in a very
general sense. It does not require iron bars or stone walls: you can
be imprisoned in the street. False imprisonment is a tort that
is perpetrated when the defendant deprives the claimant of his
liberty without lawful justification.
If you Arrest a person, that
constitutes a prima facie imprisonment, so many cases against
the police for wrongful arrest take the form of actions for
false imprisonment.
Because the boundaries of false imprisonment are so wide, it might
be helpful to consider some actions that do not amount to
false imprisonment. Obstruction of a person's right of way,
even if the obstruction is unlawful, is not a false imprisonment
(see: BirdVJones1845), although it might
be actionable in Nuisance. It probably is not false
imprisonment if a person accepts confinement voluntarily, with a
contractual agreement as to his mode of release
see: RobinsonVBalmainNewFerryCo1910. And, of
course, there is no false imprisonment where the imprisoner acts
under specific statutory authority (see: PowerOfArrest).
It appears to be generally accepted that it is not false imprisonment
to restrain someone from committing a BreachOfThePeace,
although there is little case law on this.
It has often been argued that to be imprisoned, the claimant must
have known of the fact of his imprisonment. However, this position
was refuted in MeeringVGrahame-WhiteAviationCo1920.
False imprisonment is one of the few civil actions that can still
be tried by a jury. Traditionally juries have awarded very large
sums in damages, particularly where the defendant is a police
officer. Enterprising lawyers have sometimes been able to frame
an action that should properly be considered an Assault
as one of false imprisonment
(notoriously in Rape cases). The reasoning here - which is
probably correct - is that a jury will be more sympathetic to the
claimant's plight than a judge would.
TortLaw
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