Zander Goss successfully defends Greater Manchester Police in false imprisonment claim

HHJ Malek sitting in the County Court at Manchester has dismissed claims for false imprisonment and assault and battery arising from a 19 February 2017 arrest. Zander Goss (instructed by Matthew Smith of GMP Legal Services) represented the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police.

Following reports that a gunshot victim was making his own way to hospital and that a silver hatchback had been seen at the sight of the shooting, police attended Manchester Royal Infirmary. Shortly thereafter, C drove up to an ambulance bay bearing the gunshot victim in the front passenger seat and another man in the rear. An officer spoke with C to ascertain what had happened, who C was, and where the shooting occurred. C was also informed that the silver hatchback would be seized (as it was part of an extended crime scene).

Although C was candid with police about his name and criminal history, HHJ Malek accepted the police evidence that C was agitated, evasive, vague, and inconsistent in answering police questions, and resistant to the seizure of the car, which cumulatively led the arresting officer to genuinely and reasonably suspect that C was concealing information about the shooting because he had participated in the offending. As the Judge acknowledged, this was a fast-moving and serious situation with an attacker potentially still in the vicinity. HHJ Malek rejected C’s assertion that a voluntary interview would have been a practical alternative to arrest. C’s challenges to the decision to authorise detention and to the length of detention were similarly dismissed.

The Court rejected C’s claim that an extensive list of property seized from his person and from the silver hatchback was not returned to him. Liability had been admitted on a narrow point concerning retention and destruction of the car, but HHJ Malek rejected C’s assertions that at the time of being crushed, the car contained a valuable gold chain necklace which C claimed to have secured in a secret compartment he had installed behind the glovebox.

The Court awarded modest damages, accepting the police valuation for conversion of the destroyed car at 10% of C’s pleaded value. C was ordered to pay GMP’s costs in the case in light of GMP’s victory on nearly every issue of substance in the case (subject to permission on enforcement, due to C being legally aided).