Messam v Bedfordshire Constabulary

A police vehicle may pursue and stop a vehicle where there are reasonable grounds to do so, but must not act in a manner which unnecessarily endangers life or limb. On an application for permission to appeal, an appellate court will not reopen factual issues where the trial judge made tenable findings which determine liability, even if the reasoning could have been fuller. A finding that a vehicle ought to have stopped may, in context, imply that it could reasonably have stopped. Where that finding establishes that the collision resulted from the civilian driver's failure to stop, the police are absolved of fault.

The claimant was injured when he was a passenger in a Citroen involved in a collision with a police Range Rover pursuing it as an armed response vehicle. The Recorder dismissed the claim against the Chief Constable, finding that the Citroen had slowed but had not stopped, that the Range Rover had stopped, and that the Citroen then swerved as the officers reasonably believed it was attempting to escape.

The claimant sought permission to appeal from the decision of the Chester County Court dated 12 December 2001. Permission had previously been refused on the papers. The application challenged the Recorder's factual findings and the way in which the factual scenarios had been applied.

1. Application refused. Sedley LJ held that the application had no real prospect of success. Hale LJ agreed.
2. It was common ground that the police had reasonable grounds to seek and stop the vehicle. It was also common ground that they were not entitled to pursue it in a manner which unnecessarily endangered life or limb, as recognised in Marshall v Osmond [1983] 1 QB 1034.
3. The Recorder's statement that the Citroen ought to have stopped necessarily implied that, in his view, the driver could reasonably have stopped. Read with the further findings that the Range Rover had stopped in sufficient time and in a sufficient position, the cause of the collision lay with the Citroen driver's failure to stop rather than with the police.
4. The factual scenarios put to the Recorder were artificially polarised and did not exhaust the possibilities. Nevertheless, the Recorder had made sufficient tenable findings to determine liability. Possible inconsistencies in the evidence, the scene plan, the location of the vehicle damage and the ACPO manual could not provide a basis for further appellate argument once the crucial finding had been made.
5. The Court recognised that the result was unfortunate for the claimant and that fuller reasoning would have been desirable. Those concerns did not give the proposed appeal a real prospect of success. The application was refused, with a public funding assessment.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Permission to appeal from the Chester County Court decision of 12 December 2001 was refused. Permission had earlier been refused on the papers by Hale LJ.