Police duty of care for positive acts during an arrest (Robinson v CC West Yorkshire)
Two police officers in England decide to arrest a suspected drug dealer, Kyle, on a busy high street at lunchtime. They know he is likely to try to run. They approach him while Edna Price, aged 79, is walking immediately beside him. Kyle struggles, and he and both officers fall on top of Edna, breaking her hip. Edna sues the chief constable in negligence. The chief constable argues that the police owe no duty of care to members of the public when they are suppressing crime.
Which of the following best describes whether the officers owed Edna a duty of care?
Choose one answer to see the reasoning.
Worked answer
Correct answer B: Yes, because Edna's injury was caused by the officers' own positive act, and ordinary negligence principles apply to the police as to anyone.
THE RULE TO REMEMBER
Public authorities, including the police, owe the ordinary duty to take care not to cause foreseeable personal injury by their positive acts; the special rules restricting liability concern omissions to protect people from third parties.
Police duty of care for positive acts during an arrest (Robinson v CC West Yorkshire)
In Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4 the Supreme Court held that public authorities, including the police, are generally under a duty of care to avoid causing actionable harm where a duty would arise under ordinary principles of negligence, unless the law provides otherwise. The decisive distinction is between causing harm (a positive act) and failing to protect someone from harm caused by another (an omission). Edna's complaint is not that the officers failed to protect her from Kyle; it is that their own decision to make the arrest beside a frail pedestrian, when an escape attempt was foreseeable, resulted in her being injured. That is a positive act causing foreseeable physical injury, an established category in which a duty arises without any need to re-run a fresh policy analysis. The officers therefore owed Edna a duty of care; whether they breached it and caused her injury are separate questions.
Why A is wrong: Robinson rejected the idea of a general police immunity; Hill-type reasoning concerns omissions, not harm the police themselves cause.
Why C is wrong: This is not an omissions case: Edna was injured by the arrest the officers carried out, not merely by Kyle acting independently.
Why D is wrong: Where a case falls within an established category, such as positive acts causing foreseeable personal injury, the court does not re-apply Caparo as a three-stage test.
Why E is wrong: Exercising a statutory function does not displace a duty that would otherwise arise for a positive act unless the statute, properly construed, excludes it.
A little more practice done.
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