Court case(1919) 122 LT 44

The plaintiff was employed at the defendant company's aircraft works. Paint had been stolen from the works and he was suspected. Two members of the company's works police asked him to come with them to the works office to answer questions; he agreed and was taken to a waiting room, where the two men stayed close by him. He did not know that they had been told not to let him leave, and that they would have stopped him had he tried. After some time the Metropolitan Police were called, he was arrested and charged, and he was later acquitted. He sued the company for false imprisonment, among other claims, for the period spent in the waiting room.

The Court of Appeal (Warrington and Atkin LJJ.; Duke LJ dissenting) held that the plaintiff had been falsely imprisoned from the time the works police were instructed to keep him under watch so that he could not leave. Atkin LJ. said that "a person could be imprisoned without his knowing it. I think a person can be imprisoned while he is asleep, while he is in a state of drunkenness, while he is unconscious, and while he is a lunatic." Knowledge of the restraint might be relevant to damages but was not an element of the wrong; it was the restraint in fact, not the plaintiff's perception of it, that mattered. The earlier decision in Herring v. Boyle (1834), which required knowledge, was not followed. Duke LJ thought there was no restraint at all since the plaintiff stayed of his own free will.