Case notes - G.E. v Commissioner of An Garda Síochána & Others: Sea Changes Rejected and an Age-Old Tort Reassessed
Author | Sam Walsh |
Pages | pp 140 - 150 |
Published date | 12 July 2022 |
Date | 12 July 2022 |
140
G.E. v Commissioner of An Garda Síochána &
Others: Sea Changes Rejected and an Age-Old
Tort Reassessed
SAM WALSH*
I. Introduction
It is a testament to the complexity and uidity of the common law that ‘a novel
and important issue’1 can still arise in a cause of action ‘referenced in the texts
and yearbooks since the middle of the thirteenth century’.2 In the case of G.E. v
Commissioner of An Garda Síochána & others (‘G.E.’),3the cause of action therein
was the age-old tort of false imprisonment, an intentional and trespassory tort
which is actionable per se, and the novel issue was the assertion made by the
appellants that:
where a plainti establishes that he or she has been unlawfully conned, a
defendant will defeat any consequent claim for compensatory damages if it
can be shown that had the plainti not been unlawfully detained he or she
could and would have been lawfully detained.4
e law of damages for the tort of false imprisonment has been subject to signicant
reconsideration in the UK. In 2011, the UK Supreme Court in R (WL (Congo))
v Secretary of State for the Home Department (‘Lumba’)5 held that compensatory
damages would not be awarded if it could be shown that a person would have been
lawfully detained in any event, a ruling which formed the basis of the appellants’
submission above. is was subsequently applied in 2018 by the UK Court of
Appeal in Parker v Chief Constable of Essex Police (‘Parker’).6
In reaching his conclusions, Murray J, on behalf of the Court of Appeal, weighed
the appellants’ submissions, based largely on Lumba and its interpretation in Parker,
against the history of false imprisonment in Irish case law and its interaction with
the so-called ‘compensatory principle’ central to the law of torts.
* Sam Walsh is a student of Law and French at Trinity College Dublin. Sam would like to thank his
parents for their support. Any views or opinions expressed in this article are the personal views and
opinions of the author.
1G.E. v Commissioner of An Garda Síochána & Others [2021] IECA 113 (G.E.) [1] (Murray J).
2ibid [70].
3 ibid.
4ibid [1].
5R (WL (Congo)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department[2011] UKSC 12.
6Parker v e Chief Constable of Essex Police [2018] EWCA Civ 2788, [2019] 1 WLR 2238.
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