Dear Colleagues,

The Court of Appeal of England and Wales yesterday dealt with “the novel question whether a supplier of information to the police, which led to a criminal investigation, was owed a contractual or tortious duty by the police to exercise reasonable care in the conduct of the investigation so as to safeguard him from economic loss”, in An Informer v A Chief Constable [2012] EWCA Civ 197 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/197.html. The claims in contract and negligence were dismissed at first instance, and the Court of Appeal upheld the rejection of the claim. Toulson LJ observes at 76:

At the heart of C's economic loss claim is his complaint that he was obstructed by the conduct of the police from dealing with his assets as he intended and that he suffered severe financial consequences. The reason for the obstruction about which he complains was that the police had cause to suspect that the relevant assets belonged to X and were the proceeds of crime. Until the decision was taken by the CPS not to prosecute C, there was a conflict between his financial interests and the public interest in the preservation of property reasonably suspected of being the proceeds of crime. It would not be just or reasonable for the court to place the police under a duty to give priority to supporting C's financial welfare over the public interest in the detection of crime and recovery of the proceeds.

There is also some consideration of the relevance (if any) of the Hill principle and other police liability cases (Pill LJ is particularly cautious on the applicability of that line of authorities).

Best wishes,

James

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James Lee
Lecturer and Director of Careers
Academic Fellow of the Inner Temple

Birmingham Law School
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom
 
Tel: +44 (0)121 414 3629
E-mail: j.s.f.lee@bham.ac.uk

Web: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/law/lee-james.aspx