Appearances

May it please the court, my name is Mr Sun and I am joined by Mr Lemmon on behalf of the Appellant in this matter, Bill. I will be speaking for 15 minutes and Mr Lemmon for a further 15 minutes.

Submissions

Your Honour and learned counsels, today we have a case which primarily involves a clash of characters involving a complex web of facts that we, as the counsels to the Appellant will be seeking to elucidate. This is a case which will invoke our knowledge of tort law – specifically the torts of false imprisonment and assault. I, as the Senior Counsel, will be deciphering the role of consent, awareness, and reasonable means of escape within the tort of false imprisonment, and my learned junior counsel will enlighten the Court on matters regarding the tort of assault – specifically, the stringent factors that must be satisfied in order to prove assault against an individual.

Before I open my submissions, I would first like to remind the Court of the factors that constitute false imprisonment. Firstly, a directly intentional and total deprivation of liberty. This has clearly been satisfied by the facts of this case, wherein Michelle has acted in a duplicitous nature to fulfil what she described as a “prank” against Bill but what was in fact an act to lock him totally within the Moot Court without any reasonable means of escape. The other factors of this tort, awareness and consent, are more contentious and will be discussed in my submissions.

In relation to the first ground of appeal – that of false imprisonment – I will make three submissions. The first of these is founded on learned trial judge Dass’s submission that Bill did not even know he was being imprisoned. With all due respect to Justice Dass’s decision, we submit, Your Honour, that consent is absolutely immaterial in proving a case of false imprisonment. We have noted in previous landmark cases such as Meering and Grahame-White Aviation Co (1919) 122 LT 44, such as State of South Australia and Lampard-Trevorrow (2010) 106 SASR 331, that a party’s awareness of deprivation of liberty is not an element of the tort of false imprisonment. If it is allowed by Your Honour, may the Counsel dispense of full citations for these cases in future references?

In Meering and Grahame-White Aviation Co, an employee was questioned on suspicion of theft whilst, unbeknownst to him, police offers were stationed outside to prevent him from leaving. In SA and Trevorrow, a child was raised, unknown to him, by foster parents, an action sanctioned by the government. The similarity binding these two cases was the imprisoned party’s absolute and total unawareness of his or their imprisonment, and it is

this principle that we turn the attention of the Court to today. Of course, we concede that Bill’s unawareness of his deprivation of liberty would diminish his damages sought – however, unfortunately, this is not an issue we are discussing today. Based on the principle of false imprisonment alone, Bill’s unawareness must not disqualify his claim of false imprisonment.

Secondly, in this case we see a Respondent who is highly duplicitous in her nature and behaviour, and as a result we see an Appellant who has been disadvantaged and faced with public humiliation as a result. Once again with respect to learned justice Dass, she erred in her statement that Bill had given consent to be locked in the Moot Court. Rather, we submit that what Bill had consented to did not amount to his imprisonment – instead, he had consented to Michelle locking up the Moot Court, and thus a state where, in Michelle’s own words “if he left the room, he wouldn’t be able to get back in.” Michelle then proceeded to lock both doors and effectively prevent Bill from escaping or leaving. Your Honour, how can this possibly amount of Bill’s consent to his imprisonment? We acknowledge that the Respondent may note cases such as Balmain New Ferry Co v Robertson (1906) 4 CLR 379, wherein the defendant was judged to given implied consent to being imprisoned and thus was not liable to a case of false imprisonment. However, we must distinguish the facts of this aforementioned case and our case at hand today. In the former case, there were clear signs displayed outside the wharf stating that the defendant could only exit by paying a certain fee, and thus the defendant had given his consent to this condition by entering into the wharf. In our case today, not only did Michelle not clearly indicate to Bill that she was locking him inside the Moot Court, she indeed used manipulative, duplicitous, and despicable methods to deceive him into a sense of assuredness that he would have been able to leave when in actuality he was clearly unable. For this reason, we submit that Justice Dass erred in her identification of consent.

Thirdly is the issue of the key left in the room. Your Honour, it is obvious form the facts of the case that there neither Appellant nor Respondent was aware of this key, and thus, there was no reasonable means of escape for our Appellant Bill. A reasonable person could not have been expected to assume that their could have been a spare key left in a room when they had very clearly been told (in this case by Michelle) that there was no other key and no other way to get back into or out of the Court. Nor could a reasonable person have been expected to search for a key inside a room when they were not even aware that such a key existed! We turn the Court’s attention presently to the case Burton v Davies [1953] QSR 26, wherein the plaintiff was judged to have been falsely imprisoned by the defendant inside a car, as the defendant had driven at high speed and thus there was no viable way for the plaintiff to escape or jump out of the car without sustaining injuries. This case was clear in its setting of precedent principle that false imprisonment

must entail a lack of reasonable method of escape for a reasonable person, and Your Honour, we submit that this condition has been clearly met by the circumstances in the case at hand. Moving away from the issue of the key very briefly, we concede that there was a window present in the room – however, this window must have definitely been several stories tall if the view had been “blocked by trees”, as is mentioned in the case and thus once again did not present a reasonable means of escape without a significant risk of severe injury, analogous to Burton v Davies.

This now brings me to my concluding remarks. We have presented three submissions today regarding the error of learned trial justice Dass in her reasoning and judgement against the appellant’s claim of false imprisonment. We have submitted that Bill’s unawareness was immaterial, that his consent was founded on Michelle’s duplicity, and that he lacked any reasonable means of escape. For this reason, we submit that Justice Dass’s trial judgement must be overturned.

If there are no further questions, your Honour, that concludes my submissions. I defer to my learned junior to continue the case for the Appellant.