Roche v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE BUXTON,LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY,LORD JUSTICE JONATHAN PARKER |
| Judgment Date | 25 October 2005 |
| Neutral Citation | [2005] EWCA Civ 1454 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | B2/2004/0858 (A) |
| Date | 25 October 2005 |
[2005] EWCA Civ 1454
Lord Justice Buxton
Lord Justice Sedley
Lord Justice Jonathan Parker
B2/2004/0858 (A)
B2/2004/0858
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT
MANCHESTER COUNTY COURT
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE TETLOW)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2
MR ERIC SHANNON (instructed by Halliwells of Manchester) appeared on behalf of the Appellant
MR ROGER FARLEY QC and MR ALASTAIR WRIGHT (instructed by Stephensons of Leigh) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
This appeal is brought from the decision of His Honour Judge Tetlow in Manchester County Court as long ago as April 2004.
The case sprang from a confrontation on the streets of Manchester between the claimant and various police officers. The claimant, it appears, has purported to be known by a number of names but, for the purpose of these proceedings at least, he is Mr Roche. Mr Roche has a history of differences of opinion with the police force and a history of not only breaches of the law, but also complaints on his part about the treatment of him by the police. As the judge felicitously put it at one stage in his judgment, the claimant and the authority are not happy bedfellows. There was a certain amount of material before the judge to show that Mr Roche's impatience with the police force was, to some extent at least, reciprocated.
The claims in the action were for damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution together with damages in relation to personal injury and damage to his motor vehicle. We are not concerned with the damage to the motor vehicle. I will look in more detail at a later stage at the fact that the personal injury takes the form of psychiatric illness caused by the incidents of which Mr Roche complains.
The outcome of the proceedings was that Mr Roche was successful in all his complaints. He recovered £7,500 for the personal injury. He recovered actual and aggravated damages for false imprisonment in a modest sum. He recovered both actual and aggravated damages for malicious prosecution in the sum of £15,000. The judge made a further award for exemplary damages in the sum of £10,000.
The history of the events is set out in detail in the judgment of His Honour Judge Tetlow. I shall simply refer to such aspects of the case as are germane to this appeal. Anyone who wants to find out more about this matter can safely refer to Judge Tetlow's judgment. The incidents of which complaint was made date back to as long ago as 5 January 1999 when there was a confrontation originally in Campbell Street, Manchester between Mr Roche then driving a Range Rover and a group of officers from the Manchester Police Tactical Support Group. They were some five officers in all. The officer in charge was Sergeant McDermott. The other officers were Police Constables Collins, Codling, Walker and Booth. Without going into detail, the officers, who were apparently parked up in a cul-de-sac in some sort of support for an on-going operation, complained that Mr Roche was blocking the road with his vehicle and had done so deliberately. Mr Roche clearly indulged in, at the very lowest, some truculent language and an impertinent or obscene gesture was apparently made by him towards one of the officers. After these exchanges he drove off. The police constables in their vehicle or vehicles came after him.
There was at the trial and in the written submissions in this appeal a great deal of dispute about what exactly occurred at Campbell Street. That is only relevant, if at all, as a matter of background. The judge's finding was that Mr Roche did no more than behave rudely and possibly aggressively towards the officers, without making any actual threatening gesture. The judge also found that when the officers drove off after Mr Roche they were not doing so intending to arrest him, but to upbraid him, if that is the right expression, in respect of his behaviour. There was some uncertainty as to which of the officers at that stage knew that Mr Roche was a person known to the police who was suspected of having aggressive postures towards them, but that again, in the event, does not seem to have been relevant to the matters of which complaint was made.
This cortège of Mr Roche in front followed by the police car or cars arrived at a place called Sunnyside Road, where Mr Roche stopped. The police came out of their vehicle and surrounded or, on another view, approached Mr Roche's car. He drove off and was eventually arrested at another site, clearly on the instructions of, or on the basis of information given to other officers by, Sergeant McDermott. The arrest was for assault under Section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act, in the shape of assault occasioning actual bodily harm to three officers, that is Sergeant McDermott himself, Constable Collins and Constable Booth, and also for dangerous driving. He was prosecuted for the Section 47 assaults in front of the Manchester Crown Court and was acquitted on all charges. He was prosecuted before the magistrates on a separate charge of threatening behaviour and was also acquitted. As I understand it, he was also acquitted by the Crown Court of the dangerous driving charge.
Mr Roche alleged in this action that he had been falsely imprisoned at the time of the arrest because the arrest was wrongful. That complaint turned on whether or not he should have been arrested. He also complained that the prosecution was malicious. The interaction between those two complaints is a matter of some confusion in these proceedings, and I shall have to return to it.
Dealing with the matter of wrongful arrest, the defence was that Mr Roche had committed arrestable offences and that therefore the police were entitled to arrest him. The defence was put thus in paragraph 20:
"The claimant then, by use of his car, deliberately and/or recklessly assaulted PC Booth, PC Collins and Sergeant McDermott in the following manner."
There then followed an extremely detailed series of allegations as to what had happened in Sunnyside Road. That the allegation was, in substance, one of deliberate use of the car is demonstrated by the witness statement in these proceedings of Sergeant McDermott, the officer who took the decision to arrest Mr Roche, when he said this:
"There was clearly reasonable suspicion that he deliberately assaulted three police officers. The arrest was perfectly justified."
The judge made the following findings about the incident at Sunnyside Road. In respect of the alleged assault on Sergeant McDermott and Police Constable Collins, he said at paragraph 98 of his judgment:
"I am afraid I cannot accept the vehicle knocked either of them over."
He then gave a series of circumstantial reasons based on his analysis of the evidence why he did not accept the evidence of those two officers that they had been knocked over. As regards Constable Booth, he accepted in paragraph 97 of his judgment that the car collided with him, but, the judge said, not in the dramatic fashion portrayed by some of the witnesses. The judge accepted that Constable Booth had been injured to the top of his foot by the impact. We were told that the constable was unfortunately invalided off work for some time because of that injury. The judge said this at paragraph 99 of his judgment:
"Was the claimant aware of colliding with Police Constable Booth? On balance, I do not think he was, for two reasons:
(1) The tenor of what he was saying in interview was that he wanted to escape before anyone got to the front of his vehicle. Further, his denial he had collided with anyone. Perhaps one should approach such piece of evidence with caution.
(2) The claimant was clearly terrified of being attacked by the police. An instant before he drove off, he had been speaking agitatedly on his mobile, not looking ahead or, indeed, to the right. That is confirmed by the switchboard comments, particularly in the earlier first part of the conversation transcribed, of a hysterical gentleman. That is how he was behaving then and that fits with what the police saw."
The judge asked himself what the position would be if he was wrong in that finding and the claimant was aware that he had collided with Police Constable Booth. On that hypothesis—which I would emphasise is not the judge's finding—he said this (paragraph 103):
" ….. did the claimant do it deliberately in the sense of intending to hit him [Constable Booth] or was he, as he maintained in interview, trying to escape from what he thought would be a likely thrashing? In my judgment the overwhelming probability is the latter."
The judge then mentioned the confrontation in Campbell Street and accepted that Mr Roche had made a rude gesture towards one of the officers (Constable Collins) as he left that site. He went on and said this (paragraphs 104 and 105):
"104 To find himself pursued by the police vehicle must have caused apprehension but not sufficient to make him feel there was a need to escape; he stops. He is quickly met with three and then another two officers. He has four officers on the driver's side and one on the nearside. Two at least are shouting at him to get out of the car …..
105 ….. He drove off fast to escape from a situation created by those police officers. It was suggested to the police they had gone in mob handed. That is probably a fair description. The situation got out of control and the police should be proof against the kind of provocation provided by the claimant."
Those were effectively findings...
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