Our Actions Against the Police team are pleased to confirm that we have just settled a claim for our client Mr LB for false imprisonment and negligence.
Mr LB was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on 16th April 2021 on the basis of inaccurate information provided by the prison service. This was the amount of time that he had already served in relation to a linked matter. The sentencing judge had specifically indicated that he would impose a sentence that reflected time that he had already served on the other sentence.
Repeated complaints to prison authorities ignored
After he had been sentenced, Mr LB repeatedly raised the issue in prison via complaint and the prison authorities consistently misunderstood the nature of his complaint. They believed that he was asking for remand time to count at a time when in fact he had also been a serving prisoner.
This was not what our client was asking for. He was saying that the prison had given inaccurate information in relation to the time that he had already served on the linked matter. Repeated complaints were met with the same response. He was advised that if he wished, he should appeal his sentence.
Legal action against the Ministry of Justice
The error was finally rectified by the Court of Appeal on 22nd February 2023. He was at that point due for immediate release but was not actually released for a further 2 days. By the time of his release, he had been imprisoned unnecessarily for a total of 39 days.
We issued proceedings for false imprisonment and argued negligence in the alternative. The claim has now been settled with MOJ agreeing to pay our client damages of £3k.
AAP teams notes
LB’s case was complicated by the fact that he had been seeking correction of a sentence lawfully imposed by the court. The prison were therefore correct to tell him that his best course of action was to appeal his sentence. Had this been done promptly, he would most likely not have been detained beyond the time that he ought to have been, had the sentence been correctly calculated in the first place.
It is partly for this reason that the amount of compensation accepted was lower than would have been the case for a straight-forward unlawful imprisonment for 39 days.
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