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16 Clev.-Marshall L. Rev. 415 (1967)
Police Liability for False Arrest or Imprisonment

handle is hein.journals/clevslr16 and id is 423 raw text is: Police Liability for False Arrest or Imprisonment John M. Manos* F INDEED, THE POLICEMAN'S LOT is not a happy one,1 it is certainly be- coming a most sophisticated and complicated one. With swirling cur- rents of thought eddying through the United States Supreme Court, re- sulting in the overthrow of long-established constitutional standards, the consequent code of conduct for the policeman has changed radically. The newly expanded duty to recognize and to respect a full panorama of con- stitutional rights of an accused has excited much comment, favorable and critical. But of much more personal concern to the individual policeman is the potential liability he may face in an action for damages, particu- larly for false imprisonment. This liability may spring from the ancient common law concept of false imprisonment or, its sister action, malicious prosecution, or from the relatively recent Civil Rights Statutes.2 False imprisonment has been defined by the Ohio Supreme Court as an unlawful detention or illegal deprivation of one's liberty. 3 Thus, the word false is synonymous with unlawful. The following is a complete definition of false imprisonment as defined by the American Law Institute: I An act which, directly or indirectly, is a legal cause of a confinement of another within boundaries fixed by the actor for any time, no mat- ter how short in duration, makes the actor liable to the other irre- spective of whether harm is caused to any legally protected interest of the other, if the act is intended so to confine the other or a third person, and the other is conscious of the confinement, and the con- finement is not consented to by the other, and the confinement is not otherwise privileged.5 It is difficult to arrive at a valid distinction between false arrest and false imprisonment. The two causes of action are practically indis- tinguishable. When there is a false arrest there is a false imprisonment, but in a false arrest detention is based on asserted legal authority to en- force the processes of the law. A false imprisonment can arise between private persons for a private end with no relevance to the administration of criminal law. Our primary concern here, of course, is solely with a detention under color of -law. This article purports to describe the var- *Judge, Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio. Gilbert & Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance. 2 42 U.S.C.A. §§ 1983, 1985 (1964). 3 Brinkman v. Drolesbaugh, 97 Ohio St. 171, 119 N.E. 451 (1918). 4 Cf., also, Prosser, Torts 55 (3d ed. 1964). 5 1 Restatement, Torts, 66 § 35 (1934).

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