Zander Goss successfully defends Metropolitan Police in false imprisonment claim brought by three claimants concerning forced entry to premises to save life or limb

Foster, Moor, and Powell v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (Case 026LR646, Central London County Court)

Following a trial in June 2026, HHJ Holmes has handed down a reserved judgment dismissing claims for trespass to land, battery, and false imprisonment. Zander Goss (instructed by Emma Gallimore of Weightmans) represented the Defendant Commissioner throughout the four years it took to reach trial.

Facts

The case concerned the circumstances in which police may force entry to premises under s.17(1)(e) Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 ‘for the purpose of saving life or limb’ and whether police lawfully used force against, and arrested, the occupants who had resisted police entry to the premises.

In March 2018, an anonymous caller reported that there had been an hour-long disturbance from an upstairs neighbour, where a male had hit his wife, the wife was screaming, and a child was present. The caller specifically gave police P’s flat number as the location of the disturbance.

When police arrived and explained there had been a reported disturbance, P initially consented to police entering the flat. P’s two cousins (F and M) then persuaded P to withdraw that consent, and the ‘belligerent and abusive reaction’ to police strengthened the officers’ belief that someone had come to harm. The three attending officers explained that they would be entering under s.17(1)(e) PACE to save life or limb.

For almost 30 minutes, police and the three Claimants were in a stand-off at the front door of the flat. P grabbed the contact officer by the throat, leading him to point his Taser at P and arrest for assaulting a constable. Officers resisted the Claimants’ collective efforts to shut the door on police, ultimately resorting to the use of CS spray around the edge of the door.

When officers eventually gaining entry with the support of additional units, F and M were arrested for obstructing a constable in the execution of his duty, and P vigorously resisted arrest, resulting in renewed use of CS spray at close proximity.

It transpired that there was no one else in the flat apart from the three male Claimants, and the anonymous caller had been mistaken. The Claimants were acquitted when the magistrates’ court found that the circumstances presenting to the officers did not rise to the level of severity which would permit them to enter under s.17(1)(e).

HHJ Holmes had to determine:

• Whether the officers genuinely and reasonably believed that a person had suffered or was at risk of serious injury (and thus whether the police were, or at any point became, trespassers);
• Whether the force used by police to avoid being ejected from the flat was reasonable (including the use of CS spray around the slightly ajar door);
• Whether the arresting officers genuinely and reasonably suspected the Claimants to have committed the offences for which they were arrested;
• Whether the force used by police to effect arrest was reasonable (including close-range deployment of CS and what the judge described as ‘very significant’ use of force on P)

The Judge noted that the officers’ contemporaneous remarks on BWV, in witness statements, and other records variously described the s.17(1)(e) power as relating to ‘welfare checks’, ‘suspected injury’, ‘belief that someone had come to harm’, etc. The Judge considered it ‘finely balanced’ whether the officers had truly understood the very high bar to exercising a power under that provision. Despite the officers’ use of less than legally precise language, HHJ Holmes found that each of the officers who used s.17(1)(e) genuinely and reasonably believed that someone in the property had been seriously injured. It followed that the police were not trespassers, and P had no right to use force against police to remove them from the flat. P’s arrest for assaulting a constable was lawful.

F and M had assisted the Third Claimant in barricading the door, meaning that officers had reasonable grounds to suspect that they had obstructed police from arresting P. Because of the Claimants’ conduct—and in particular P’s resistance to arrest—the considerable use of force was ‘more than justified’ in the circumstances.

Comment

Caselaw has established that this power of entry is reserved for situations involving risk of death or serious injury—not merely a welfare check or a suspicion of injury. The correct test is whether the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that it is necessary to enter premises to avert a risk of death or serious injury: see Baker v CPS [2009] EWHC 299 (Admin) and Marzan v RSPCA [2016] EWHC 993 (Admin). This case highlights how important it is that frontline police constables understand the distinction and can provide clear justification for exercising this power when the decision to force entry is inevitably subject to scrutiny. The case also illustrates how police can successfully rely on s.17(1)(e) PACE to defend a civil claim for trespass, even when a criminal court has been unpersuaded that that provision was engaged.