Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v Copeland

The police bear the burden of proving lawful justification for an arrest and ensuing detention. Where one officer directly procures an arrest by another officer, that burden includes establishing that the procuring officer did not deliberately supply false evidence.

For malicious prosecution, a complainant is a prosecutor where, in substance, the complainant was responsible for setting the law in motion. The test is the same in simple and complex cases. An independent charging decision does not break responsibility where it was vitiated by deliberately false information.

An appellate court should exercise extreme caution before reversing a jury’s factual verdict. The absence of reasons does not entitle the court to treat the verdict with less respect than a judge’s factual findings.

Following an eight-day trial, a jury awarded the respondent £25,200 for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution arising from events at a police station. The High Court entered judgment against the Commissioner consistently with the jury’s answers.

The Commissioner appealed on the grounds that the judge had wrongly placed upon the police the burden of disproving an officer’s alleged fabrication, and had used an insufficient question to establish that the officer was a prosecutor for malicious prosecution. A further ground challenged the jury’s verdict as perverse and against the weight of the evidence.

The central issues were whether the police had to establish the good faith of an officer who procured an arrest, whether that officer was in substance responsible for the later prosecution, and whether the jury’s factual conclusions could stand.

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. The trial judge correctly directed the jury that the Commissioner bore the burden of establishing the lawfulness of the arrest. A claim in false imprisonment rests on the absence of lawful authority for the arrest and detention. Where an officer directly causes another officer to arrest a person, the legality of the arrest turns on the legality of the procuring officer’s conduct. The Commissioner therefore had to establish that the procuring officer acted in good faith rather than deliberately supplying false evidence: paras 18–22.
2. The burden does not change according to whether the officer making the allegation personally effects the arrest or asks another officer to do so. A person may falsely imprison another by directly causing an arrest without lawful justification even though the arresting officer acts lawfully. In any event, the jury’s answer to the malicious prosecution question established that the respondent had proved the fabrication on the balance of probabilities: paras 20–23.
3. For malicious prosecution, the controlling question is whether the defendant was, in substance, responsible for the prosecution having been brought, or had set the law in motion. The statement in Martin v Watson that independent judgment may be virtually impossible where the relevant facts are known only to the complainant described a paradigm case; it did not establish an additional or exclusive test. The same test applies in simple and complex cases: paras 25–32.
4. The officer was instrumental in bringing the prosecution and was, in substance, a person responsible for it. The later charging discretion was vitiated because the jury found that he had lied to procure the prosecution. On the facts, no other conclusion could reasonably have been reached: paras 33–34.
5. The sixth jury question focused on the principal officer’s alleged fabrication but did not misdirect the jury. Directions must be read as a whole. The summing-up made clear that the jury had to consider the other witnesses, medical evidence and CCTV before deciding whether the allegation was fabricated: paras 35–38.
6. Although the evidence caused the court considerable unease, an appellate court must exercise extreme caution and reluctance before overturning a jury’s factual verdict. The competing evidence afforded a sufficient basis for the verdict, which was neither reversed as perverse nor displaced as against the weight of the evidence: paras 39–44.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The Commissioner’s appeal was dismissed unanimously. The directions on false imprisonment and malicious prosecution were upheld, and the jury’s verdict was not disturbed: [2014] EWCA Civ 1014.
• High Court, Queen’s Bench Division: Hickinbottom J entered judgment for the respondent for £25,200 in damages for assault, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution following the jury’s answers. No neutral citation is stated in the judgment.