1. Jane Laporte and Another v The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Turner |
| Judgment Date | 31 October 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 3574 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ12X00694 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 31 October 2014 |
[2014] EWHC 3574 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Turner
Case No: HQ12X00694
Phillippa Kaufmann QC and Martha Spurrier (instructed by Bhatt Murphy) for the Claimants
George Thomas and Cecily White (instructed by Metropolitan Police Service) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 30 th June to 18 th July 2014
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
INTRODUCTION
The claimants in this case seek (i) damages against the defendant for assault and battery, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution and (ii) a declaration that he has violated their rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
A PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION
At the outset, I would wish to say something about the way in which I propose to attempt to meet the challenge, which arises in acute form in this case, of producing a satisfactory judgment which is also one of manageable length. I have considered a very substantial quantity of material. The parties in this case have produced opening and closing written submissions which run to a combined length of about 280 pages all of which I have read carefully. These documents contain long and detailed catalogues of inconsistencies and implausibilities which each side contends have the effect of weakening the evidence of the witnesses called by the other. As one might expect, the documents also contain a substantial number of examples of material alleged to enhance the credibility of their own witnesses. Whilst paying tribute to the level of industry to which these well intentioned and articulate submissions attest I resist the temptation to try to reconcile and resolve all of the subordinate issues which have thereby been generated. As the Court of Appeal held in Customs and Excise Commissioners v A and Another [2003] Fam. 55:
"82 A judge's task is not easy. One does often have to spend time absorbing arguments advanced by the parties which in the event turn out not to be central to the decision-making process…
83 However, judges should bear in mind that the primary function of a first instance judgment is to find facts and identify the crucial legal points and to advance reasons for deciding them in a particular way. The longer a judgment is and the more issues with which it deals the greater the likelihood that: (i) the losing party, the Court of Appeal and any future readers of the judgment will not be able to identify the crucial matters which swayed the judge; (ii) the judgment will contain something with which the unsuccessful party can legitimately take issue and attempt to launch an appeal; (iii) citation of the judgment in future cases will lengthen the hearing of those future cases because time will be taken sorting out the precise status of the judicial observation in question; (iv) reading the judgment will occupy a considerable amount of the time of legal advisers to other parties in future cases who again will have to sort out the status of the judicial observation in question. All this adds to the cost of obtaining legal advice.
84 Our system of full judgments has many advantages but one must also be conscious of the disadvantages."
I have tried to balance those advantages and disadvantages in what follows by giving reasoned decisions on those issues of fact which I consider to be central but without dealing with every peripheral issue the resolution of which would not in any event impact on my essential findings or upon the outcome of the claims.
BACKGROUND
Much of the background to the circumstances giving rise to these claims is not in dispute. A considerable amount of relevant and contemporaneous material has been captured on films and still photographs taken on mobile telephones, together with footage recorded on CCTV cameras. It is therefore possible to narrate, at least in general terms, the events of the occasion in question without generating undue controversy.
On 24th February 2011, Haringey London Borough Council ("the Council") planned to hold a full council meeting at Haringey Civic Centre at which it was to debate proposed cuts to the Council's budget and services. A budget had to be agreed by midnight. The meeting was due to start at 7.30pm. The public were to be allowed to attend in the public gallery on the second floor. This provided seating for eighty people and overlooked the council chamber which was on the first floor. Space in the public gallery was to be allocated on a "first come first served" basis.
Representatives of both the Council and the Metropolitan Police were aware in advance of a planned public protest against the cuts to be held outside the building. They had not, however, anticipated that the protestors might thereafter take further and disruptive action inside the building. Thus the Defendant's intention was that the protest, provided it remained peaceful, would be policed by a small number of local officers comprising one inspector, two sergeants and six police constables. The officer supervising the operation was Inspector French.
The plan was that twelve members of staff employed by the Council would be on duty in the reception area to search the bags of people entering the building and to direct members of the public up to the public gallery and councillors to the main chamber. A spiral staircase led from the foyer to the council chamber via a galleried footbridge. It was intended that this would be the route taken by councillors and staff. Members of the public were to use the main stairs, which, incidentally, provided access to all three floors, to get to the public gallery. Two officers were to be deployed inside the building to facilitate the safe movement of members of the public up the main stairs to the public gallery and to prevent them from gaining access to the footbridge leading to the council chamber.
By 7.10pm a considerable number of protesters had gathered outside the Civic Centre chanting noisily and waving placards. When the doors were opened many of them surged into the building. Almost immediately it became apparent that the plan to control access to, and to direct access within, the building was not going to work.
Some protesters made their way up the main staircase but a number of them went up the spiral staircase. Three officers on the first floor footbridge, Inspector French, Acting Police Sergeant Kneebone and PC Bloomfield, were vainly attempting to direct protestors to the main staircase. Soon, a crowd had gathered on the footbridge. They were chanting: "Whose town hall? Our town hall!"
The doors to the council chamber from the first floor landing were closed but many of the protesters were undeterred by this. Some began to chant: "Let's go in!" and "Push forward." Police officers formed a cordon in front of the doors and asked the protesters to move back. By this stage, the situation had, to say the least, got completely out of hand. The sheer weight of numbers of the protesters pushing forwards in a relatively confined space gave rise to a real risk that people would be injured in the crush.
In response to the deteriorating situation, and about ten minutes after the protesters had first entered the building, Inspector French requested that Territorial Support Group ("TSG") officers should be deployed. The TSG is a uniformed unit of the Metropolitan Police specialising in public order containment.
The doors to the council chamber eventually gave way. The force involved was sufficient to cause one of the officers to be pressed so hard against them as to break the glass. Some protestors then moved forward to occupy the chamber. After a few seconds, the police were able to re-establish the cordon but only after a significant number of protestors had already entered the council chamber itself.
By this time, councillors had started to gather in the council chamber ready to start the meeting. Soon, the leader of the Council, Claire Kober, emerged and warned the protesters that if the disturbance were to continue then it might become necessary to hold the meeting behind closed doors. It is difficult to tell how many members of the crowd would have heard what she had to say, so loud was the chanting at this stage. Some were shouting repeatedly for her resignation. Others were just making inarticulate noise. There can, however, be no doubt that it would have been impossible for the council meeting to take place so long as the protest continued to involve the occupation of the chamber accompanied by noisy shouting and ululation.
The councillors in the chamber then went outside via a fire exit. They were later let back into the building and they reassembled in the third floor staff canteen area. The canteen is not an area of the building that is open to the general public. It is accessed from a landing at the top of the main staircase via a set of magnetically locked doors which can be released with a swipe card issued to those with a right of access. The councillors' intention was to reconvene the meeting away from the public because of the serious disruption and disorderly behaviour in the council chamber.
The First Claimant, Ms Laporte, suspected that the councillors were using the protest as a pretext upon which to hold their meeting in private and believed that they should not be allowed to avoid the continued scrutiny of members of the public. She went to the third floor to see if the councillors were planning to hold their meeting there. Satisfied...
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