Tort Law

Robinson v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police

[2018] UKSC 4; [2018] AC 736

Facts

• Mrs Robinson, an elderly pedestrian, was walking along a busy street.
• Police officers were preparing to arrest a suspected drug dealer.
• The suspect was physically larger than the officers and was expected to resist.
• The arrest was attempted in a location where members of the public were present.
• A struggle occurred between the officers and the suspect.
• They moved into Mrs Robinson, knocked her to the ground and fell upon her.
• She suffered personal injuries.
• The trial judge found that the officers had negligently planned and carried out the arrest because they had failed adequately to consider the foreseeable danger to nearby pedestrians.
• However, the claim was dismissed on the mistaken basis that the police enjoyed a general immunity from negligence claims connected with apprehending criminals.
• The Court of Appeal also rejected the claim, applying Caparo as though it required a new policy-based duty.
• Mrs Robinson appealed to the Supreme Court.

• Whether police officers owe a duty not to cause foreseeable injury through their positive acts.
• Whether the police enjoy a general immunity from negligence liability while performing operational duties.
• Whether the Caparo test must be applied afresh in every negligence case.

• Public authorities are generally subject to the ordinary law of negligence.
• A defendant who positively creates a foreseeable risk of physical injury ordinarily owes a duty to exercise reasonable care.
• Police officers do not possess a general immunity from negligence liability.
• A distinction exists between:
o causing harm through a positive act; and
o merely failing to protect a person from harm caused by a third party.
• Caparo is not a universal checklist that must replace established principles.
• Courts should first ask whether the duty is recognised by existing precedent and should develop genuinely novel duties incrementally.

• The officers did not merely fail to prevent the suspect from harming Mrs Robinson.
• Their positive decision to carry out the arrest and their physical struggle with him created the immediate danger that injured her.
• Ordinary negligence principles already impose a duty upon persons to take reasonable care not to cause foreseeable physical injury through their actions.
• It was foreseeable that a resistant arrest on a busy pavement could knock down nearby pedestrians.
• Mrs Robinson was physically close to the officers and directly affected by their operation.
• No new or exceptional duty needed to be invented.
• The earlier Hill decision did not create a blanket immunity for police activity. It concerned a failure to protect a person from a criminal, which raised different omission and third-party-harm principles.
• Policy concerns about defensive policing could not erase an ordinary duty arising from affirmative conduct.
• The trial judge’s factual findings established that the officers had failed to take reasonable precautions and that the failure caused Mrs Robinson’s injuries.

• The Supreme Court allowed Mrs Robinson’s appeal.
• The police owed her an ordinary duty to take reasonable care not to cause foreseeable physical injury while carrying out the arrest.
• There was no general police immunity.
• Caparo should not have been treated as a universal test requiring the court to decide from the beginning whether a duty was fair, just and reasonable.
• The trial judge’s finding of negligence was restored, and the Chief Constable was liable.