PracticePleadings - striking out - claimant after arrest accepting formal caution at police station - subsequent claim for false imprisonment not abuse of processAbraham v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis: CA (Mantell and Kay LJJ) 8 December 2000The claimant maintained that she had been falsely arrested and imprisoned, but after four hours spent in the police station she made an admission to a public order offence and was given a formal caution.

The judge struck out her claim applying the principle in Hunter v Chief Constable of the West Midlands [1982] AC 529 which forbids a collateral attack on the correctness of a subsisting judgment of a court of trial in a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction.

The claimant appealed.Matthew Ryder (instructed by Fisher Meredith, Clapham) for the claimant.

Giles Powell (instructed by Bircham & Co, London) for the Commissioner.Held, although it shared some characteristics with a conviction a formal caution was not brought about by a court decision, so it did not fall foul of the principle in Hunter; that its purpose was to deal quickly with minor offenders, divert them from the courts and reduce the chances of their reoffending; that the existence of a caution might influence a decision whether or not to prosecute for a subsequent offence, and photographs and fingerprints of a cautioned offender could be retained; but that it was a cardinal principle of public policy that those who had suffered a wrong should have the right to seek redress in the courts; and that, accordingly, considerations of policy and fairness required that the claim be allowed to continue; and that, further, on the assumed facts the making of the admission had been contributed to by a breach of duty on the part of the police and was thus deprived of effect as an estoppel.