ACTION JUSTIFIED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 320, 6 September 1932, Page 3

ACTION JUSTIFIED

(Special to "Post")

DEFENDANTS WIN . WELLINGTON WOMAN LOSES CLAIN FOR £150 DAMAGES MAGISTRATE'S JUDGEMENT

Wellington, Saturday. In a reserved judgment delivered at the Magistrates' Court, Mr. E. Pag'e S.M., expressed the opinion that the defendants in the action between James Smith, Ltd., and Mrs. Doris N. Paris who claimed £150 damages as a result of an incident in that firms' shop on December 23 last when a shopwalked suspected her of shoplifting, were reasonable and justified and he therefore gave judgment for James Smith Ltd. with costs amounting to £9/10/Mrs. Paris alleged that the defendants' shopwalker had assaulted her by holding her by the arm as she walked back to the office with him, that. he falsely imprisoned her by detaining her in the office against her will, and .that he wrongfully took and detained her goods. Right to Arrest "In an action for false imprisonment," said Mr. Page, "there need be no actual imprisonment in th'e ordinary sense (i.e. incarceration) and it is enough that a plaintiff has been in any manner wrongfully deprived of his personal liberty. An unlawful arrest, or any act whereby a man is unlawfully prevented from leaving the building in which he is, constitutes a false imprisonment. Nor is it needful that there should be force, e.g. showing a man a warrant for his arrest and thereby obtaining his submission is itself an arrest if it amount to a tacit threat to execute the warrant by force if necessary, but it is otherwise if it amount merely to a request with no threat or intent to use force. "At common law there is a distinction between the position of a police constable and a private person in respect to the right to arrest any person. At common law a police constable may arrest a person if he has reasonable cause to suspeet that a felony has been committed by that person although it afterwards appear that no felony has been committed; but to justify a private person in arresting another on suspicion of having committed a felony, he must prove that the felony has actually been committed. Liberty Guarded "Interference with the liberty of the subject, and especially by a private person, has ever been most jealously guarded by the common law of the land," said his Worship. "The right of arrest in relation to theft is further dealt with by statute, section 248 of the Justices of Peace Act, 1927, providing that any person found committing a theft which is punishable by summary conviction except only by the offence of angling in the daytime in a private fishery, may be immediately apprehended without a warrant by any person and forthwith'taken befoi'e some Justice to be dealt with according to law or to be handed over to any constable to be so taken. Reasonable Enquiries "A shopwalker or other person who has reason to believe that some of his goods have been stolen has, however, the right to make reasonable enquiries into the matter, and this, I think, is what the defendants' superintendent did," said Mr. Page. "The plaintiff voluntarily accompanied him into the office and it was with her permission that he examined the contents of the shopping bag that she was carrying. The door of the office was open throughout the interview, and the plaintiff could have left the office at any time. Her allegation that she was seized by the arm and held while being taken into the office, and her allegation that she was detained there and was unable to depart therefrom have, in my opinion, not been established. "With regard to the third allegation, namely that the defendants' superintendent wrongfully took and detained certain articles and refused to hand them back to her, I think that the superintendent's proposal that he he allowed to return the goods to the firm from which they had come was in the circumstances a natural oue, and it is, I think, clear that the plaintiff consented to that course." Judgment was accordingly entered for the defendants.