Where a person is intentionally confined without legal authority, such confinement amounts to false imprisonment. Also, imposition of unlawful restrain upon another by force, threat of force or show of authority is false imprisonment.
Where a person is intentionally confined without legal authority, such confinement amounts to false imprisonment. Also, imposition of unlawful restrain upon another by force, threat of force or show of authority is false imprisonment.
The retrain must be total to amount to false imprisonment. Partial restrain is actionable perhaps as nuisance but not false imprisonment. Ajagu v. UBN Ltd. & Anor. (1986) Vol. I QLRN 184.
The elements of false imprisonment are the following:
Some jurisdictions require the following in addition to the above:
A defendant will only be liable for refusing to release a person when his obligation to do so arises. Herd v. Weardale Steel, Coal & Coke Co. Ltd. (1915) AC 67.
There is police privilege whereby a police officer has the right to detain someone if he has probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and that the person is so involved, or if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity based on specific or particularized facts. The detention of such a person does not amount to false imprisonment.
An action for false imprisonment cannot lie against a person who merely gave information or made a report of a person leading to the police on its own initiative, to arrest a suspect. However, the protection afforded a person in reporting a felony would be lost where the information is found to be false. Such person will be held liable for the consequences of the arrest and damages flowing therefrom. S.P.D.C (Nig.) Ltd. Chief Olanrewaju (2003) FWLR (Pt. 140) 1640.
For a plaintiff to succeed in an action for false imprisonment, he must show that the defendant was actually instrumental in setting the law in motion against him. The defendant usually, must have done more than merely passing information to the police. Borno State Government v. Alhaji Ashieik & Ors. (2007) All FWLR (Pt. 357) 1006.
Damages for false imprisonment generally is worked on the loss of dignity that is considered as injury to feelings, that is, the dignity, mental suffering, disgrace and humiliation with any attendant loss of the station to be assessed at the discretion of the court. Ajagu v. UBN Ltd. & Anor. (1986) Vol. I QLRN 184.
Justification in an action for false imprisonment could be found on defense to the person or property of the defendant, stopping a breach of the peace, or use of reasonable force in the prevention of a crime, or in effecting or assisting a lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or persons unlawfully at large, acting in aid of the officers of the law, in protecting danger to the plaintiff or others, chastisement in administration of parental or other authority. Mtsor v. Adeke (2005) All FWLR (Pt. 287) 872.
The remedies available to a plaintiff in action for trespass to his person include the following: