High Court: Man awarded €7,500 for false imprisonment by the State

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• Judgment:
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Stating that it had been established that the man was unlawfully deprived of his liberty and was falsely imprisoned, Ms Justice Faherty rejected submissions from the State that the unlawfulness of the man’s detention was due to a technical error which could be remedied by a nominal award of €1.

Background

GE, a non-national who came to Ireland in 2008, was refused refugee status in 2009. On 1 August 2011, GE was travelling by bus from Belfast to Dublin, when he was arrested and detained by members of An Garda Síochána acting in their capacity as immigration officers.

GE was detained overnight in Dundalk Garda Station on foot of a detention order signed by the arresting garda and made out to the Member in Charge of Dundalk Garda Station. On 2 August 2011, GE was formally or nominally released at Dundalk Garda Station and then immediately re-arrested and detained, and brought to Cloverhill Prison.

On 9 August 2011, GE applied to the High Court for an inquiry pursuant to Article 40.4 of the Constitution into the lawfulness of his detention. The High Court found GE’s detention to be lawful.

On 26 August 2011, on appeal to the Supreme Court, GE’s detention was found to be unlawful. Chief Justice Denham said that “the detention warrant was defective because it did not state on its face either the fact of the refusal to land or that the reason for the arrest and detention of GE was that the immigration officer in question had reasonable cause to suspect that GE was a non-national who had been unlawfully in the State for a continuous period of less than three months”.

GE’s release was ordered from Cloverhill, but notably there was a delay of approximately 2 hours before he was released.

Immediately following his release he was re-arrested and detained on foot of a further detention order. An inquiry found that his detention was lawful but it was held that the delay in releasing him on foot of the order of the Supreme Court on 26th August 2011 was unlawful, and that as a result he had been deprived of his constitutional right to liberty for a period of just less than two hours.

Claim for damages

Issuing the within proceedings in May 2013, GE sought damages for false imprisonment and deprivation of his constitutional right to arising from his detention from 1-26 August 2011, including the period from 12:40pm to 3pm on 26 August 2011.

In the High Court, Ms Justice Faherty said that the scope of the tort of false imprisonment was set out in DF v Garda Commissioner IEHC 213. Justice explained that it was well established that where a law provides for a breach of a right there was no separate entitlement to a claim for damages for breach of the constitutional right to liberty, and that Raducan v Minister for Justice ILRM 419 did not change the fundamental premise of Hanrahan v Merck Sharp and Dohme Ireland Limited (Supreme Court, Unreported, 5th July, 1988) or W v Ireland (No. 2) 2 IR 14.

Stating that damages for deprivation of the right to liberty which was a factor in Raducan, could just as equally have been dealt with under false imprisonment; Ms Justice Faherty said it was unnecessary for the Court to consider the present matter under the rubric of breach of constitutional rights where the right in issue is protected by common law.

In assessing the damages for false imprisonment, Ms Justice Faherty referred to McGregor on damages (19th Ed). Ms Justice Faherty said that damages could be aggravated on occasion but found no basis for awarding aggravated damages.

The defendants argued that since GE’s detention would have been lawful but-for a technicality, that the Court should view his imprisonment as a lesser infringement of the constitutional guarantee to personal liberty – urging the Court to consider the UK Supreme Court case of R (Lumba) v Secretary of State for the Home Department 2 WLR 671.

Agreeing with submissions on behalf of GE that Lumba could not be said to reflect the law in Ireland, Ms Justice Faherty said that the fact of the matter was that GE was wrongly deprived of his liberty for 26 days; that the deprivation was not in due course of law as required by the Constitution; and that this could not be remedied by a nominal award of €1.

Compensatory damages

Ms Justice Faherty was satisfied that GE was unlawfully deprived of his liberty and was falsely imprisoned. GE claimed damages for pain and injury suffered while in prison, stating that he had never been in prison previously and he found prison to be an upsetting experience.

Ms Justice Faherty said that there were certain credibility issues which the Court was obliged to take into account in awarding compensatory damages. In particular, Ms Justice Faherty pointed to the matters upon which GE was challenged in the course of this cross-examination, and stated that the Court could not ignore the contradictions in his inability to provide identity documents in 2015 when documents were produced to the Register of Marriages in 2009/10. Ms Justice Faherty said that GE’s explanation that he had mislaid the document was unsatisfactory.

Stating that the credibility deficits in GE’s evidence had a bearing on the level of compensatory damages, Ms Justice Faherty set the compensation at €7,500 for the tort of false imprisonment over 26 days and for injury caused as a result.