Police Duty to Escaping Prisoner

Vellino v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester (CA NLJ 5 October p1441)

The claimant had a habit, when arrested in his second floor flat, of jumping out of the window. On the last occasion on which he was arrested he almost immediately jumped from his second floor bedroom window, suffering severe injuries including brain damage and tetraplegia. He alleged that knowing of his propensity, the police officers were negligent and in breach of their duty to him when they stood idly by as he was making his escape. The Court of Appeal agreed with the judge’s dismissal of the action, holding that escape from custody was a sufficiently serious criminal offence to invoke the principle ‘ex turpi causa non oritur actio’, and therefore the police owed no duty to an arrested person to take care that he was not injured in a foreseeable attempt by him to escape from police custody. The Court of Appeal had reserved its judgment pending publication of the Law Commission’s Consultation Paper No 160 on The Illegality Defence in Tort, but found nothing in the paper to suggest that the law as it currently stood entitled the claimant to succeed or that the court could or should reform the law so as to enable someone in the claimant’s position to succeed.