The Importance of Expertise

Today’s blog is about the importance of finding the right solicitor to handle your Action Against the Police case.  Whilst I pride myself on being such a specialist – as evidenced by my track record of success and the testimony of my clients on this website – there are, frankly, many other solicitors out there who advertise for Actions Against the Police work without having the necessary expertise to do a competent job.

Advertising for cases is one thing, winning them is another.

An example of this is a case I have recently settled on behalf of a husband and wife, whom I will identify for the purposes of this blog as Alice and Colin.

Alice and Colin experienced a traumatic event in June 2020 when their car was ‘ambushed’ by Metropolitan Police Officers who deployed a stinger device across the road, puncturing the tyres of their vehicle and bringing it to a violent halt.

The couple were bundled from the car – Colin was immediately handcuffed – and thereafter they were both detained for approximately an hour at the roadside, without arrest.

It transpired that an inaccurate report had wrongly caused the Metropolitan Police to believe that Alice and Colin’s vehicle had been involved in the ‘abduction’ of a child.  There was in fact no child in the couple’s vehicle, and nor had there been at any point in their journey that day – this was very much a case of ‘mistaken identity’ which appears to have arisen from false information given to the Police by a member of the public.

Alice and Colin initially instructed a firm of lawyers whom I shall identify as “X Solicitors”. This firm’s website claims to deliver the ‘highest standards’ in actions against the police.

X Solicitors sent a letter of claim on behalf of Alice and Colin to the Met, but on receiving a denial of liability relying upon Section 17 powers of search under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, prevaricated about continuing further with the claim.

Seemingly unable to decide upon the merits of the claim without outside assistance, X Solicitors instructed a barrister who prepared an Advice which concluded that Alice and Colin’s claims were unmeritorious.  Clinging to the Barrister’s coattails, X Solicitors ultimately informed Alice and Colin that their detention would “in ours and the Barrister’s view be considered reasonable”. 

Thankfully, however, Alice and Colin did not let matters rest with the purportedly ‘expert’ advice of X Solicitors and instead consulted me for a second opinion. 

Having reviewed the evidence, I was pleased to advise Alice and Colin that I not only felt that they both had legitimate claims against the Met – but that those claims were so strong that there was as good chance we would be able to get the Police to settle without the need for Court proceedings.

I therefore sent the Met what was in effect a fresh letter of claim on behalf of Alice and Colin, raising the following arguments which X Solicitors (and their barrister) had completely overlooked –

• Even if it was conceded that Police Officers had a reasonable basis to deploy the stinger and stop my clients’ vehicle for the purposes of establishing whether it contained a kidnapped child, Section 17 of PACE did not grant a power to detain the occupants of the premises (in this case the vehicle) and any lawful basis for detaining either of my clients would in any event have evaporated once the search of the vehicle had been completed – which, given the size of the car, could not realistically have taken any more than 5 minutes.

• At no point were either of my clients placed under arrest, but were nevertheless ‘detained’ for approximately an hour.  

• Furthermore, and in any event, the use of force upon Colin, in the form of handcuffs, was unlawful either on the basis that it was a disproportionate use of force against a wholly compliant and none threatening individual and/or was unlawful in that even if the initial application of handcuffs was justified the duration of the application of those handcuffs – approximately 30 minutes in total – was unlawful in that it was excessive and that the handcuffs were being maintained upon my client during his period of false imprisonment (as identified above).

Within a few months of my intervention on behalf of Alice and Colin, their claims – which had been rapidly approaching the third anniversary of the incident – were brought to a successful conclusion with the Met agreeing to pay both of them a significant award of damages and legal costs.

As I had indicated to Alice and Colin, it had not even been necessary to instigate legal proceedings in order to achieve this result. 

I am proud to say that rather than spending thousands of pounds on advertising, I will let my track record of success in Actions Against the Police speak for itself.  I possess the confidence and experience that those who dabble in these sorts of claims lack, and I will leave no stone unturned in order to achieve justice for my clients.

Names have been changed.