Commissioner of the Police for the Metropolis v Reilly
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE MACDUFF |
| Judgment Date | 22 April 2008 |
| Neutral Citation | [2008] EWHC 2217 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 22 April 2008 |
| Docket Number | CC/2007/PTA/0607 |
[2008] EWHC 2217 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Mr Justice Macduff
CC/2007/PTA/0607
Mr C Hallin (instructed by Metropolitan Police Legal Services) appeared on behalf of the Claimant.
Mr A Metzer (instructed by JR Jones & Co) appeared on behalf of the Defendant.
Approved as perfected herein
Alistair MacDuff 19.09.08
In 2007 the claimant, Caroline Reilly, commenced proceedings against the defendant. The claim form pleaded breaches of duty of care and negligence. There were in fact two Particulars of Claim, which His Honour Judge Collins named “Particulars of Claim A” and “Particulars of Claim B”. Particulars of Claim A ran from paragraph 1 to 56 and Particulars of Claim B from 1 to 76. The defendant applied to strike out these claims and the strike-out application came before His Honour Judge Collins at the Central London County Court on 31 st August 2007. He struck out the whole of B and a substantial part of A, but he refused to strike out paragraphs 1 to 29 of Particulars of Claim A. I note in parentheses that these were home-made Particulars of Claim by Miss Reilly, then a litigant in person. She is, however, represented before me.
It is against that refusal to strike out paragraphs 1 to 29 that the appellant defendant, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, appeals. It is the appellant's case that the claim is unsustainable in law and that it should have been struck out.
The judge summarised the claim and that part of the claim which he retained. The remaining non struck-out part of the claim can be summarised in this way.
The claimant had made many complaints to the police, principally at Ilford, about harassment by a man called Peter Webb, a man with a criminal record and a drug habit. She frequently had to wait for a long time before the police arrived, if they arrived at all. They did not take her complaints seriously. She was frequently told to stay at the premises until a police officer arrived, but on occasions no police officer did arrive. Nothing was done by the police either to arrest and prosecute Mr Webb, or to prevent his continued campaign of harassment against her, causing distress, anxiety and possible injury.
Judge Collins summarised it very briefly in his judgment thus:
“Miss Reilly, who has addressed me very courteously and sympathetically, was the victim for a significant period of time of harassment by a man named Webb. She gives details of his extremely unpleasant conduct over a period of time, particularly when he was a tenant in her accommodation. There is no doubt that on the basis of these allegations, which I accept for the purpose of this application, Mr Webb committed a number of criminal offences which made Miss Reilly's life particularly unpleasant and uncomfortable. She complained to the police about Mr Webb's conduct. Essentially her complaint in paragraphs 1 to 29 is that, for whatever reason, because they were incompetent, whether they were just not interested, whether they were overworked, whether they made mistakes or whatever, the police, in particular various named officers of the Commissioner, failed to exercise proper care and diligence in investigating her claim that she had been the victim of crime. She maintains that if it had been done properly Mr Webb could have been stopped and she could have been saved a great deal of trauma.”
I interpolate that Judge Collins was absolutely right, for the purpose of the application, to make the assumption that the allegations made by the claimant respondent would be proved.
Having summarised that part of the claim Judge Collins looked at the other allegations and struck those out – the remainder of Particulars of Claim A and the whole of Particulars of Claim B. I need not consider those parts of his judgment which are not under appeal.
In the course of his judgment the judge reviewed the most relevant of the case law and it is clear that the two leading cases in this area of law are Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [1988] 2 WLR 1049 and Brooks v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2005] 1 WLR 1495. Those are both House of Lords' decisions and the thrust of those decisions is that there is generally no duty owed by the police to members of the general public in negligence to apprehend criminals or to detect crime. However incompetently they act, however unreasonable their behaviour, however their duties are performed in breach of those rules which could be described as “negligent”, they are not actionable at the suit of members of the general public. However, there are exceptions to that general principle. Steyn LJ in Brooks, the more recent case, left open the possibility that there would be cases of outrageous negligence by the police which would fall beyond the reach of the Hill principle. He went on to say:
“It would be unwise to try to predict accurately what unusual cases could conceivably arise. I certainly do not say that they could not arise. But such exceptional cases on the margins of the principle in Hill's case will have to be considered and determined if and when they occur.”
This had been also a part of the Hill decision itself. That, of course, was a notorious case where it had been alleged that the West Yorkshire Police had acted negligently in their failure to detect and arrest a man who, at the relevant time, was known as the Yorkshire Ripper and who had gone on an orgy of murder of young women. The headnote in Hill, so far as important, reads as follows:
“…nor did they [the police] owe a duty of care to individual members of the public who might suffer injury through the criminal's activities”
I emphasise the next words:
“save where their failure to apprehend him had created an exceptional added risk, different in incidence from the general risk to the public at large from criminal activities, so as to establish sufficient proximity of relationship between the police officers and the victims of the crime…
Note the use of the word “proximity”, because in the case of Hill the claimant could not be said to meet the text of proximity which of course forms an important part of the ratio in the well-known case of Caparo. The claimant in Hill was the personal representative of a murder victim of the Yorkshire Ripper who had been a member of the general public. She was not a complainant to the police. She was not somebody who had placed herself in the hands of the police....
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Reilly v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
...EWHC 2217 (QB)" class="content__heading content__heading--depth1"> Neutral Citation: [2008] EWHC 2217 (QB) Court and Reference: High Court, Queen's Bench Division, CC/2007/PTA/0607 Judge: MacDuff J Reilly and Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis Appearances: A Metzer (instructed by JR J......
-
Table of Cases, Volume 83, 2010
...ZACC 22 12, 17Chief Constable of the Hertfordshire Police v Van Colle [2008] UKHL50 13Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis v Reilly [2008] EWHC 2217 12Chief Constable of The Hertfordshire Police v Van Colle and another;Smith v Chief Constable of Sussex Police (2008) UKHL 50 17, 22, 25C......
-
Suing Detectives
...the HoL’s decisions but thought thisclaim for negligence should proceed to trial (Commissioner ofPolice for the Metropolis vReilly, [2008] EWHC 2217). (2) TheCourt of Appeal in Northern Ireland allowed a claim of negli-gence against the Chief Constable of the then Royal UlsterConstabulary t......