Legal Technique and Reasoning Moot Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Legal Technique and Reasoning Moot - Case Study Example When Barry asked Graham to unlock the door Graham refused and said that he would be released only after Barry finished cleaning the windows. This resulted in confinement of Barry for a considerable period of time2. My Lord false imprisonment is committed when an employee is deliberately and lawlessly held against his or her will not allowing him or her to leave the room. This could be done either by locking the person in a room or closing all the path through which he or she could go out. The most common way of retaining an employee by an employer is, when he refuses to allow the person to leave the room. The employer may do this by locking him or her in a room, or by putting someone at the door to the room to avoid the person from leaving. Nevertheless, movement of the person so imprisoned, must be entirely restricted so that the employer's action qualifies as false imprisonment. Thus in the case on hand Barry was locked on the scaffolding thereby completely restricting his movements. To be completely confined physically, the plaintiff must not be able to move from the place of confinement. A plaintiff, thus cannot be said to be totally confined, if a means of breaking out is available to the restricted person. Nevertheless, such means of escape must be fair and reasonable4. It was, for instance, a fair way of escape in (Wright v Wright) 5 where the escape required a nominal encroachment on the land of a third party. Thus for Barry v. Graham, Barry was physically restricted from moving out of the place.. ---------------------------------------- 4Burton v Davies [1953] St R Qd 26. 5Wright v Wright (1699) 1 Ld Raym 739. False imprisonment requires the captivity of another person or the control of their movement. To set up false imprisonment a plaintiff has to institute at least 3 elements, and perhaps a fourth also as is discussed below: (1) The plaintiff is restrained (that is he is, sort of imprisoned). (2) The defendant restrained the plaintiff and held captive. (3) The plaintiff has the suitable mental state, which is deliberate, almost certainly carelessness and maybe negligence. (4) Even though arguable, but extremely litigious contentious is the fourth element, and that is that the plaintiff must know of the imprisonment. If the supra mentioned elements are fulfilled then it is false imprisonment. Nevertheless sometimes it may so happen that the imprisonment which does not fulfil all these requirements may still be unjust in one of the two following ways: (1) It may be unjust in negligence6 (This case is for unintentional imprisonment). (2) It may be unjust due to an action as in the case (Williams v Hursey and Wright v Wilson)7, both the cases were for partial imprisonment. In case of (De Freville v Dill)8