Big Town Nursing Home,
Inc. v. Newman
Court of Civil Appeals of
461 S.W.2d 195.
Prosser, p. 37-38
Facts: Newman was admitted to the defendant’s nursing
home. Newman decided he wanted to leave
and made several attempts to do so. He
was forcibly restrained by the defendants.
There was no court order for him to be restrained.
Issue: Did the nursing home falsely imprison Newman? If so, is the nursing home liable for
exemplary (punitive) damages?
Rule: False imprisonment occurs when one person directly
restrains another person’s physical freedom without legal justification. Punitive damages can be awarded if the
defendant intentionally violates the rights of the plaintiff.
Analysis: This is pretty cut and dried. If the plaintiff was crazy or had agreed to
be committed somehow, the nursing home could argue that they had some legal
justification.
Conclusion: The court upheld the verdict, but declared the damages
excessive and reduced them through a process called a remittitur.
Notes and Questions:
1.
The
defendant has legal justification if his race track is private property. You ought to be able to choose who gets on
your property and who doesn’t. I guess
it would make a difference whether or not the ticket had the typical fine print
saying “we reserve the right to deny entry anytime to anybody for any
reason”. If the exclusion is on the
basis of race, it might be false imprisonment because you’re physically keeping
the person from getting into the race track but your justification is no longer
legal. Then again, you still might be
able to say that the racial discrimination plus the legitimate power to keep
people off your private property equates to “adequate legal
justification”.
1.
It
seems like based on the letter of the law there is no distinction made between
forcibly keeping someone out of a place versus forcibly keeping them in. Common sense would suggest, however, that
when we talk about imprisonment we mean you’re being locked in
somewhere.
2.
I
think there certainly could be false imprisonment in a moving automobile. If you get in a cab and the cab driver
refuses to let you out even though you paid and everything, it would be false
imprisonment even if you were moving. I
suppose false imprisonment would be possible in an entire city, but I don’t see
how it would be possible for a defendant to physically keep the plaintiff in
the city while allowing them to move around the city. Same with a whole state, because there aren’t
border guards at state borders. If it
were the whole country, it would be more realistic, since to get in or out of
this country you have to pass through some kind of security.
3.
This
seems pretty logical. If I lock one door
but leave another open, I can’t be said to be imprisoning you.
4.
I’m
glad I don’t have to escape by crawling through a sewer.
5.
I’m
glad I don’t have to escape through an exit I’m not aware of.
6.
I
don’t think this means that you couldn’t recover for false imprisonment, it’s
just that if you try to escape it’s at your own risk if you could just as well
stay.
7.
A
defendant double-parking wouldn’t result in false imprisonment because there
was no intent to deprive the plaintiff of their freedom of movement. I think the defendant would only be liable
for negligence so far as the benefit from arriving at the meeting by car
exceeded the benefit of arriving, for example, by cab or by walking.