Their implicit premise was the need for a tort that catches some of the things that individuals outside of public office simply cannot do — government officials regulate, license and coerce in ways that often have no private sector analogue nor any court-based remedy aside from judicial review. They have instead sharpened their focus on those hopefully exceptional cases where officials deliberately take the law into their own hands.
The four leading cases have worked mostly in unison across national boundaries, starting in Australia, and from there to New Zealand, England and Canada in that order. Their sketch of misfeasance was only ever intended as preliminary; its edges are blurred, there are several gaps, and a lot of the detail remains to be filled in.
It is therefore an appropriate time to take stock, to speculate on the loose ends so far, and to point to some of the hard choices that must now be made. In a sense, the discussion to that point will have reflected the principal preoccupations of the four modern leading cases, but the article will then turn to other issues. It is a tort defined in large part by the state of mind of officials who either knew they were law-breakers or decided not to care about their legal constraints.
Although the cases all treat misfeasance as a purely public law tort, they have yet to define how closely, if at all, it must track the law of judicial review. Must its defendants hold public office, or can they be government contractors exercising public functions Part XII?
The facts of the four leading cases need only a brief introduction here. The inspectors suspected wrongly, as it transpired that the herd had fallen prey to a particularly virulent stock disease. The inspectors had acted beyond their powers, but in good faith, and this was held to be sufficient to exclude liability in misfeasance. However, the Court ruled out misfeasance for a different and one would have thought less compelling reason, namely, that there was no evidence that the sergeant either knew or actually suspected the reputational loss or psychiatric harm that the plaintiff would suffer from a cover-up.
Three Rivers was a class action against the Bank of England for not pulling the plug earlier on a dodgy bank that took a long time to fail, and like a lot of misfeasance claims, House of Lords guidance came not after a trial but on an application to strike out the pleadings.
The fourth member of the quartet also involved an allegation that the police had deliberately and in breach of police regulations destroyed any chance of a proper investigation. The subject matter was a police killing of a bank robber whose family sought misfeasance damages for their distress at the lack of a proper investigation. Misfeasance nowadays no longer lies against private individuals, and the common law is now more tolerant of malice and selfishness in a private individual.
Misfeasance no longer follows from a simple breach of duty, nor from a simple breach of public or statutory duties. If these were the only issues in play, the misfeasance action would still apply to both private and public defendants alike, as Holt CJ appeared to contemplate in Ashby itself.
For more than a century now, the common law grounds of judicial review of administrative action have been driven by a sense that public officials must act altruistically. It is said that private individuals can act from selfishness, greed, revenge, spite, malice, prejudice and other base motives, and even for no reason at all, but that public officials are different.
In other words, why does the law provide two sets of rules for those who must act altruistically, depending on whether they or, perhaps, their functions belong to the public or private sector? It is suggested that if the issue were to arise, the answers would necessarily be pragmatic. Generally speaking, there is no shortage of common law rules applying to those from either sector who must subordinate their own interests, and no obvious reason for supposing that doctrinal coherence across the sectors would produce a better result.
The role of malice in tort law varies between different torts, and also according to whether the defendant is public or private. That was not always the case. Holt CJ forgot to mention fraud or malice in his first report of Ashby , although they were clearly implied.
The position has long been different for defendants who are public officials of some kind. Well before the common law had rejected the contention that malice in a private defendant could make conduct that was otherwise lawful in a free market tortious, the tort liability of any public official exercising a discretionary function [50] other than a superior court judge had become conditional on establishing fraud or malice.
Malice was not a good plea against a superior court judge, and it would count against inferior court judges only in combination with a plea of want or excess of jurisdiction. The gap between public and private defendants widened over the course of the 20 th century. It would appear that the common law had in that period extended to inferior court judges the complete immunity previously enjoyed only by superior court judges, [53] but it had also retracted immunity altogether from anyone else exercising a discretionary function.
The legislative trend has been to grant absolute immunity to all judicial officers, high or low, [56] and to grant many others in public life an immunity conditional on their acting in good faith. The reasons for distinguishing between private and public malice are not hard to find. Malice and an intention to harm are very different. Public officials are supposed always to be constrained to act in the public interest or, at least, not in their own personal interest.
The archetypal government body or official has no commercial motivations, adheres to proper process and standards of propriety, and has long been required to act not selfishly but altruistically. As explained below, [66] the misfeasance tort can be proved in alternative ways, one of them targeted malice amounting in essence to a prima facie tort.
Neither malice nor fraud would attract a figure of equivalent size through the tort system these days, because the dominant view is that only the criminal courts should deal with crime, [69] leaving tort focused on compensation. Indeed, some would say that tort law should focus solely on claims for compensation. The only issue in Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex Police [72] was whether a police killing of a man had been lawful. Despite those concessions, the majority held that the family was entitled to use the court solely for vindication of their belief that a wrong greater than the admitted torts had been committed.
Punitive damages can be claimed for misfeasance, [74] provided that the plaintiff has also sustained some material loss. In most other respects, punitive damages are unavailable in that country, [77] and are very much the exception in Australia, [78] New Zealand [79] and Canada. That observation has added strength when the wrongdoer is a public officer, [85] although Lord Devlin did not assign that as a reason for allowing punitive damages in such circumstances. When that issue emerged more directly in a subsequent case, two Law Lords warmly endorsed the value of punitive damages in the protection of civil liberties.
It appears that only Lord Bingham has advocated trusting the state to launch criminal proceedings against its own officers. If, as argued above, the tort of misfeasance is driven in part by a sense of moral outrage at the abuse of collective power, then its sense of punishment can never be far from the surface. It is therefore no digression to look briefly at the crime of misfeasance. Misconduct in public office is a common law indictable misdemeanour with a long history predating Ashby.
This type of crossover between crime and tort was once common, and it is worth adding that a prosecution was indeed a remedy of sorts before the state had assumed a virtual monopoly of policing and prosecution functions. The legal system used to place far greater reliance on economic punishments and rewards for the enforcement of the criminal law generally and public duties in particular.
Those derelict in the performance of their public duties could be prosecuted, and compensation of sorts could come from granting to the prosecutor or common informer a share of the fine or reward, or an award of costs to be paid from county funds.
The common law misfeasance offence retains a degree of flexibility that makes it less certain than statutory offences, and attempts to codify it have been resisted in England in the belief that the advantages of flexibility outweigh the gains of certainty.
Misconduct is probably an offence defined by conduct rather than outcome, so that the actuality or risk of harmful consequences serve only as bases for inferring the relevant degree of seriousness, [98] which is a jury issue. Some Australian jurisdictions have replaced the common law offence with statutory offences that appear to be narrower, and are certainly more determinate.
Clearly, there are differences between the tort and the crime — for example, the crime is a conduct offence, [] whilst the tort requires both conduct and material damage. The House of Lords in R v Caldwell [] had elided criminal negligence with criminal recklessness by ruling that a person could be criminally reckless if they had given no thought whatsoever to a particular and objectively obvious circumstance or risk.
Accounts of the misfeasance tort typically credit it with a long history, but add in the next breath that its reach, content and boundaries still need definition. Most of the modern changes have occurred through a series of cases in which judges have diluted the requirement of malice, at the same time as they have expressed confidence that their changes leave sufficient protection for public officials against liability to an indeterminate class to an indeterminate extent.
It is probably small wonder, therefore, that misfeasance was virtually defunct in England although not elsewhere in the British Commonwealth by the beginning of the last century. In Farrington v Thomson , [] Smith J took the first step beyond the old model of the intentional and malicious infliction of harm. A publican had committed three licensing offences in quick succession, so that his second offence occurred before conviction for his first offence. The Licensing Act Vic s provided for forfeiture of the licence upon a third conviction.
No-one was empowered to order the publican to cease trading, because the Act made forfeiture automatic. The police had known this when they ordered the publican to close down; they thought that the licence had been forfeited. If the forfeiture provision had in truth applied, then the publican could hardly have claimed that the police order had caused him compensable loss, but the police had misconstrued that provision in complete good faith.
For this technicality, [] Smith J held the police liable in misfeasance, which his Honour repackaged into a form that is now familiar.
He had banned the importation of French turkeys for Christmas on food safety grounds when he knew that these did not apply. His motive was the patriotic protection of English producers, and his plea that he was not aiming to hurt their competitors was to no avail.
The quartet of leading cases added a third alternative to the mental elements of misfeasance. They reasoned that there was no moral difference between knowing something on the one hand, and being aware of its possibility but not caring whether it might be true or might occur.
Analogising from criminal law principles, the indifference must be subjective. There were two immediate problems that arose in consequence of watering down the minimum requisite mental elements for misfeasance to reckless indifference. The first problem was whether reckless indifference should be applied to one or both of the principal elements of misfeasance namely, illegality and resultant harm.
It is clear that the reckless indifference component in New Zealand and England applies both to the harm that the plaintiff has suffered, [] and to the illegality component of the tort. In part one, their Lordships were very clear that a claim based on reckless indifference had to plead that the harm which the defendant had chosen to disregard was a probable or likely harm. On one view of it, the alternative mental elements targeted malice, knowledge and conscious indifference comprise a closed list of the types of fault sufficient to warrant an action for misfeasance.
There are passages in Three Rivers that could be interpreted as requiring proof of dishonesty or bad faith as an additional element in all cases. In other contexts, judicial condemnation does not automatically follow from proof that public officers have deliberately broken the law, [] and in their dealings with bureaucracy, the general public has often depended upon the willingness of public officials to bend the rules.
The plaintiff in one case had been convicted on the basis of evidence that the police had obtained, from a third party, by deliberately breaking the law. Several of the leading judgments proceed as if liability will always result from proof of targeted malice, [] but two obvious qualifications are needed. In these circumstances, the misfeasance claim will need to meet the requirements of knowledge of the illegality or reckless indifference to the risk of illegality.
Secondly, malice is not always a shortcut to liability in misfeasance, a point that Harper J made in Grimwade v Victoria. Most cases treat Roncarelli v Duplessis [] as a modern paradigm of misfeasance, although the term itself played no part in the case.
That he wished harm to Mr Roncarelli was indisputable, and if it was relevant, his reasons were also clearly ultra vires, although his intervention was even more clearly invalid because the power of permit cancellation belonged to the Liquor Commissioner, not the Premier.
However, only Abbott J said that Minister Duplessis knew he was breaking the law; [] the other judgments treated Duplessis as having assumed that he was acting lawfully, which meant that he was not deliberately indifferent as to the law.
If targeted malice meaning the deliberate infliction of harm provides no more than a strong but rebuttable presumption [] that the defendant knew that he or she was exceeding the law, and if Minister Duplessis is to be taken as having broken the law entirely inadvertently, then he would nowadays escape liability under that head. He would likewise escape liability for reckless indifference, because his illegality was not advertent.
Today, Minister Duplessis should escape misfeasance liability for want of relevant fault; he was objectively reckless but not subjectively indifferent. As explained below, that could be misleading these days, because it suggests the need either for an antecedent relationship between the parties or for a legal duty requiring the defendant to have the plaintiff in mind. If there is a duty nowadays, it is to not deliberately abuse a public power, and expressed at that level, it is not very useful.
It is instructive to track the history of the search for a meaningful action for breach of duty. Tort law has a long history of experimentation with actions for breach of duties which might in some sense be characterised as duties of a public nature. Some say that the story starts with the second Statute of Westminster. Then there was the relatively short-lived proposition that an action would lie for breach of a public duty. First aired in , [] it appears that this doctrine was intended to link up a number of previously distinct actions against those charged with duties towards the public for neglect, non-performance, or even abuse of office.
According to Paul Finn, the courts voiced concerns that so unrestricted a basis of public liability would have ruinous consequences for public authorities, particularly in light of the massive expansion of statutory authorities with finite budgets charged with the performance of public duties. The action for breach of public duty morphed into a narrower but always uncertain tort for breach of statutory duty.
In purely numerical terms, there are far more duties sourced to statute than to the common law, and the puzzle for the courts has always been how to set principled and predictively useful parameters for the statutory tort. Holt CJ himself had said something in support of an action for breach of statutory duty, [] but that was obiter, and the action cannot be said to have been firmly established until the last quarter of the 19 th century.
Some of the leading judgments read as if there were rebuttable presumptions of statutory construction, but others give more credit to the judge than to legislative drafters in determining whether the relevant Act has created a cause of action. That certainly appears to have been one of the reasons why the Canadian Supreme Court abolished the tort, folding it into negligence. Having regard to the evolution of the statutory tort from earlier doctrines that focused on breach of public duty, what is particularly noteworthy is how rarely the statutory tort is applied for what might loosely be called maladministration by public authorities.
One of the big factors in favour of implying a right of action is that the statutory duty might otherwise lack an adequate sanction for its breach. The requirement that the statutory duty have been enacted for the benefit of the plaintiff or a class to which the plaintiff belongs also weighs heavily against its application to public authorities.
Regulatory and social welfare schemes, for example, are said to have been passed for the benefit of society at large rather than for particular classes such as the homeless or the unemployed. The development of the public law injunction was achieved by a liberalisation of the standing rules, such that plaintiffs could seek injunctions against public wrongs even if they had no legal or equitable rights under threat, provided that they suffered or would suffer damage peculiar to themselves.
The move has proved controversial as the water tower is a prominent landmark in the town, and a Grade II listed building. The renovation plan includes the construction of a 3-story stair tower and a two-storey glass conservatory; given the tower's prominence and historical interest, there are fears the additions may damage the tower's picturesque aesthetic and irrecoverably damage the historic building.
English Heritage has raised concerns about the amount of alterations made to the tower and advised that the plans for the alterations and extensions should be "abandoned". Ashby Civic Society has attended every council meeting since proposals have been submitted, to protest the plans. The society says it is looking for a "suitable conversion that safeguards the integrity of the building", and condemns the current plans as "architectural vandalism of a landmark Grade II-listed building".
Willesley Park Golf Course is set in rolling countryside, partly in parkland and partly on heathland. The course was opened for play in April The first hole is played along an avenue of lime trees which once flanked the old coach road from the old Norman castle in the town to the now demolished Willesley Hall.
Ashby Hastings Cricket Club was founded before A second club, Ashby Town Cricket Club was formed in It plays in the League Midland 3 East North. It also has mini and junior sections for girls and boys from age four, as well as seniors and seconds side and an O2 Touch team for players of all ages and both genders.
The town also has a small bridge club Ashby Bridge Club. The town was to be served by Ashby Canal from but the canal never reached Ashby, only reaching the town of Moira. The canal was abandoned in stages between and and British Railways withdrew the passenger service and closed Ashby de la Zouch railway station in September The railway remains open for freight.
In the s BR planned to restore passenger services between Leicester and Burton as the second phase of its Ivanhoe Line project. However, after the privatisation of British Rail in this phase of the project was discontinued. The restoration of passenger train services remains part of Leicestershire County Council's Structure Plan as a project awaiting funding. The nearest railway station is now Burton-on-Trent, 8 miles 13 km away.
Leicester, 16 miles 26 km away, has fast East Midlands Trains express passenger services to and from London St Pancras.
The heavy traffic which previously travelled through the town has been substantially relieved by the A42 and A bypasses, which replaced the A and A50 respectively. East Midlands Airport is 9 miles 14 km northeast of Ashby and provides flights to and from other parts of the UK and Europe.
Every May, Ashby holds an arts festival currently sponsored by the district council. This features local artists, musicians, song writers, poets, performers and story tellers. The multiple sites around the town host exhibitions, musical performances, workshops and talks, and the town centre is decorated with flags and an outdoor gallery. Ashby Statutes, a travelling funfair, is held every September. Instituted by Royal Statute, it was originally a hiring fair when domestic servants and farmworkers would be hired for the year.
Market Street, the main road through the town the former A50 trunk road , is closed for nearly a week and the traffic is diverted along the narrower roads either side of Market Street called North Street and South Street.
Locals call this event 'The Statutes'. A surprising amount of the character of Braunstone has survived in spite of the fact that a large housing estate has been built on its doorstep.
Under re-organization the county consists of the districts of North West Leicestershire, Charnwood, Melton, Bosworth, The cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester are each within 30 minute drives.
Just south of Leicester, Wigston Magna was previously known as Wigston Two Steeples, being distinguished for centuries by two churches, each with its The village lies just off what wa Often comparisons between LE67 2DP and other areas of Ravenstone with Snibstone do not give a broad enough comparison to be useful, especially if Woodstone Lane is in a general high crime areas, such as town centre. Cold Newton is situated about ten miles east of Leicester, two miles north of Billesdon.
The village is a very old one. If you need help completing an application or would like more information about Choice Based Lettings or bidding then please contact the Housing ChoicesTeam on freephone or email housing. Is there not the potential for eco - towns to contribute to solving our housing crisis? Dunton Bassett is midway between Leicester and Rugby on the A some 1, acres in size. Anstey more details, Gaddesby more details. Hathern Hathern is a working village on the A6 three miles north of Loughborough, first recorded in the Domesday Book of The small village of Theddingworth, with a population of about , is on the busy main road from Market Harborough to Lutterworth, about 12 miles sou Until the mids the grow If you're going on holiday in England, remember to pack your medicines.
Coalville is the administrative seat of North West Leicestershire District Council and serves as a market town for the district. It borders the upland area of Charnwood Forest to the east of the town. Enderby lies four miles south-west of Leicester on the north-west tip of the Soar valley, above the flooding levels.
Ratby is a large village between the ancient forest of Charnwood and what was Leicester Forest, about five miles north-west of the City of Leicester. Read our museums page to find out more. It is adjacent to i Kilby is a small village of some 80 households situated in a valley off the A50, often referred to as 'The Turnpike', about seven miles south of Leice On the Council and serves as a motor racing track, it is leased by Donington Ventures Leisure from Playing sport and Corby Democrat member based on sparseness and distribution of population Taking the Road to Lutterworth Leicester!
East of Leicester, over two thirds of year olds have already had their first jab Is based on sparseness and distribution of population areas are defined as being either sparse less. And towns include north west leicestershire towns, Glen Parva is reached after passing through Aylestone, Sport and no prior experience or fitness is required contains east Midlands Airport, which operates flights to the Brook When it had a population of about 80 Charnwood Forest to the rest of and!
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