Police Entry upon Private Premises
| Published date | 01 October 1967 |
| Date | 01 October 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201836703100408 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Police Entry upon Private
Premises
THE authority of the police to enter
upon
private premises
without beingaccounted trespassers is a matter
that
has been
canvassed in many cases.
Lord
Dunedin's definition' of a
trespasser as one "who goes on
the
land without invitation of
any sort and whose presence is either unknown to the pro-
prietor, or, if known, is practically objected
to"
is one which is
disarmingly oversimplified; for
the
question is likely to
be:
Has
the
occupier given an implied invitation?
There
are
decisions in which
the
powers of
the
police appear to be very
strictly circumscribed.
Thus,
in Great Central Ry. v. Bates
(1921, 3 K.B. 578) a police constable on duty who went
through an open sliding door of a warehouse at night
"to
see
that
everything was right inside" was held to be a trespasser
and was unable to recover damages when he fell into asaw-pit.
In Davis v. Lisle (1936, 2
K.B.
434), where a police constable
entered a garage to make inquiries relating to a car which had
earlier been causing an obstruction,
the
Court used language to
suggest
that
he had no leave or licence to enter
the
premises for
this purpose.
The
true
significance of these decisions has, however, been
doubted.
The
learned Editor of Salmond on Torts, for exam-
ple, has pointed to
the
difficulty of distinguishing between a
trespasser
and
aperson entering by the tacit permission of
the
occupier. What is
the
legal position of "hawkers, beggars, tract
distributors, canvassers, strangers entering to ask
the
way?"
And what is
the
legal position of
the
police who enter
the
premises unbidden,
but
unforbidden?
The
learned Editor
suggests', as
the
only acceptable conclusion,
that
"no
person
is to be accounted atrespasser who enters in order to hold any
manner of communication with
the
occupier or any other per-
son on
the
premises, unless he knows or ought to know
that
his
1
In
Adie
v. Dumbreck (1929,
A.C
358, 371).
ISalmond on Tort,
14th
Ed., p. 400.
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