Police officers attempting to arrest a suspected drug dealer on a busy Huddersfield shopping street knocked down Mrs Elizabeth Robinson, a frail 76-year-old passer-by, and fell on top of her. The Supreme Court held that they owed her an ordinary duty to take reasonable care not to cause reasonably foreseeable injury, and that the police have no general immunity from negligence claims when investigating or preventing crime. The Chief Constable was held liable, with damages still to be assessed.
The arrest
Plain-clothes officers saw a man apparently dealing drugs in a Huddersfield shopping street. The officer in charge called for assistance because he expected the suspect to run if challenged.
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Williams stood outside a bookmakers. Willan and another officer were to take hold of him, while two others waited further along the street to block an escape. Mrs Robinson had just passed Williams and was still within a yard of him, in the officers’ line of sight, when they seized him. He resisted. Williams backed into her, she fell, and the men fell on top of her. The other officers arrived about three seconds later.
Willan knew that Williams might run and that a passer-by might be hurt. He said that if someone had appeared to be in harm’s way, he would have walked past without making the arrest. He also said that there was some urgency, because Williams still had drugs and a successful prosecution was unlikely without them. He said he had not noticed Mrs Robinson. The street was moderately busy.
The decisions below
Mrs Robinson claimed damages for personal injury caused by negligence. A claim for assault and trespass was no longer pursued. The Recorder found that injury was foreseeable and that the officers had been negligent: Willan had failed to notice her, a safer moment could have been chosen, and the other two officers were too far away. He dismissed the claim because he treated Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire as conferring a police immunity which, in the light of later Court of Appeal authority, was not confined to omissions.
The Court of Appeal treated the claim as a failure to stop the suspect injuring Mrs Robinson. Applying its reading of Caparo, it found no duty of care. It also questioned the trial judge’s criticism of the arrest in light of the need to act promptly.
Ordinary principles, not a general immunity
Lord Reed, with whom Lady Hale and Lord Hodge agreed, said that Caparo did not create a single test for every case. Where a duty is already established, the court applies it. Whether imposing a duty is fair, just and reasonable arises when the case is new and the law must develop by analogy with existing authority. This claim asked only for established principles about personal injury to be applied.
There is no general rule that the police owe no duty of care when preventing or investigating crime. Public authorities are generally liable in tort in the same way as private people, unless statute or the common law provides otherwise. The common law does not generally impose a duty to prevent harm which the defendant did not create, including harm caused by someone else, unless an exception such as an assumption of responsibility applies. Creating a danger can itself give rise to a duty to protect others from it.
Hill decided that officers investigating a series of murders owed no private-law duty to a future victim to catch the murderer. Lord Keith’s reference to an immunity must be read with his statement that a police officer, “like anyone else”, may be liable in tort to a person injured as a direct result of his acts or omissions, including for negligence. As later explained in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police, that result applies the ordinary rule about omissions. It is not a special police immunity. The cases relied on by the Chief Constable did not establish a wider immunity from liability for personal injury caused by a positive negligent act.
Why the officers were liable
The officers did not merely fail to prevent Williams from injuring Mrs Robinson. They took hold of him, and the struggle followed. It was foreseen that he was likely to resist by trying to escape. On a moderately busy street, it was reasonably foreseeable that a nearby pedestrian, especially a frail and elderly one, might be knocked over. That imposed a duty towards pedestrians in the immediate vicinity, including Mrs Robinson.
Operational decisions should not be judged by unrealistically high standards, particularly under stress, and reasonable care may still leave a real risk. The Recorder was nevertheless entitled to find negligence because Willan failed to notice Mrs Robinson. On his own evidence, he should have looked out for people nearby and would not have made the arrest if someone was in harm’s way. She was in full view and within a yard of Williams, and the arrest did not have to be made at that moment regardless of the risk. The court did not have to decide whether the Recorder’s other criticisms of the operation were justified.
Williams’s resistance did not break the chain of causation. A third party’s voluntary, especially criminal, act often does so, but not where it is the very danger which the defendant was under a duty to guard against. Mrs Robinson was injured by the danger from which the officers owed her a duty to protect her.
The concurring judgments
Lord Mance agreed that the appeal should be allowed. He had some doubt about the finding of negligence, but not enough to interfere. Lord Hughes, who had also hesitated over that finding, agreed that the judge was entitled to make it. Lord Hughes differed on the wider law: he regarded policy as the ultimate reason why officers investigating and preventing crime owe no duty to victims, suspects or witnesses. Lord Reed considered that discussion unnecessary here, because the ordinary principle governing omissions already explained the absence of a general duty to protect people from harm caused by third parties.
Verdict: The Court unanimously allowed Mrs Robinson’s appeal and held the Chief Constable liable. It sent the case back for the amount of damages to be assessed.
Source: Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4
