This page is continued from Criminal Proceedings >>>> 1. The Arrest, Search and Seizure, and Booking >>>> i. The Arrest – lawful or unlawful? >>>> Various Forms of Unlawful Arrests:

********************

false imprisonment:
(14c)

1.The restraint of a person in a bounded area without legal authority, justification, or consent.  *  False imprisonment is a common-law misdemeanor and a tort.  It applies to private as well as governmental detention. [1]

1. The unlawful restraint by one person of the physical liberty of another.  22 Am J False Imp § 1. 

An unlawful violation of the personal liberty of another, whether considered as a tort or a crime.  Parrot v Bank of America Nat Trust & Sav. Assoc. 97 Cal App 2d 14, 217 P2d 89, 35 ALR2d 263.

To constitute an unlawful arrest or a false imprisonment, it is not necessary that force be used.  The wrong done is one which may be committed by acts or by words, or by both.  An unlawful restraint of the person, or an interference with his personal liberty, is essential, but his is deemed to have been put under restraint if words or acts induced a reasonable apprehension that force would be used, if he did not submit.  In short, any unlawful exercise or show of force, by which a person is compelled to remain where he does not wish to remain or to go where he does not with to go is an unlawful arrest.  Durgin v Cohen, 168 Minn 77, 209 NW 532.
[2]

1. The unlawful restraint by one person of the physical liberty of another.  Like false arrest, to which it is closely related, it is both a tort and a crime. [3]

     Excerpt from R.F.V. Heuston’s Salmond on the Law of Torts (17th ed. 1977):

     “[In the phrase false imprisonment,] false is… used not in the ordinary sense of the mendacious or fallacious, but in the less common through well-established sense of erroneous or wrong, as in the phrases false quantity, false step, false taste, etc.“ [4]

     Excerpt from 32 Am. Jur. 2d False Imprisonment § 3 (1995):

     “Some courts have described false arrest and false imprisonment as causes of action which are distinguishable only in terminology.  The two have been called virtually indistinguishable, and identical.  however, the difference between them lies in the manner in which they arise.  In order to commit false imprisonment, it is not necessary either to intend to make an arrest or actually to make an arrest.  By contrast, a person who is falsely arrested is at the same time falsely imprisoned.“ [5]

Restatement (Second) of Torts § 35 (1977):