Hooper & Anor v Hampshire Constabulary & Anor

An appellate court should generally respect a trial judge’s findings of fact, particularly findings based on the assessment of witnesses, because it lacks the advantage of seeing and hearing them. Grounds that merely assert that evidence was false or wrongly rejected do not ordinarily provide a real prospect of establishing that the findings were wrong. Where a claim for inducing or procuring breach of contract depends on an alleged contractual right and interference with that right, failure to establish either matter is independently fatal.

The claimants sought damages from the Hampshire Constabulary and Inspector Doel, alleging that the police had induced or procured the nightclub manager to terminate an agreement permitting a teenage disco to operate for 12 months.

Southampton County Court, before His Honour Judge Thompson QC, dismissed the claim. The judge accepted the manager’s evidence that the arrangement was week-to-week and that he had ended it after trouble connected with the disco, without police pressure. The claimants renewed their application for permission to appeal, challenging those factual findings.

1. Disposition. Lord Justice Tuckey refused the renewed application for permission to appeal. The applicants and respondents were unrepresented. The court had refused requests for an adjournment and reconsidered the application on paper before the hearing.
2. Basis of the claim and trial decision. The claimants alleged that Inspector Doel had pressured the nightclub manager to terminate their agreement by indicating that the police would object to renewal of the club’s licence. The manager denied this and said that he had agreed only to permit the disco on a week-to-week basis, subject to closure if trouble occurred. The trial judge accepted that evidence.
3. Independent reasons why the claim failed. The judge’s findings meant that the claim failed on either of two grounds. The claimants had not established a contractual right to operate the disco for 12 months. They had also failed to establish that the police had interfered with any contractual right.
4. Appellate restraint. It was for the trial judge to decide which evidence to accept and which to reject and to make the necessary findings of fact. The Court of Appeal had not seen or heard the witnesses and therefore would not interfere with those findings merely because the claimants disputed them.
5. Permission threshold. The proposed grounds consisted principally of assertions that the police evidence was false and that the judge should have preferred the claimants’ evidence. They disclosed no real prospect of persuading the Court of Appeal that the findings were wrong. The application was therefore refused.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The renewed application for permission to appeal was refused: [2002] EWCA Civ 419.
• Southampton County Court: His Honour Judge Thompson QC dismissed the claim against the Hampshire Constabulary and Inspector Doel.