Wimblett v Chief Constable of Lancashire: High Court clarifies wrongful arrest accessory liability after Supreme Court ruling

The High Court has dismissed an appeal by a man who sought to hold Lancashire Constabulary liable for a wrongful arrest carried out by Devon and Cornwall Police, while setting out an authoritative analysis of the law on accessory liability for false imprisonment following the Supreme Court's decision in Lifestyle Equities CV v Ahmed [2024] UKSC 17, in a judgement handed down on 25 June 2026 ([2026] EWHC 1586 (KB)).

Gary Wimblett was arrested at Torquay Police Station in September 2021 by PC Edmunds of Devon and Cornwall Police, following a Police National Computer Nominal (PNCN) "wanted" notice issued by PC Wade of Lancashire Police in connection with an alleged breach of a non-molestation order. Mr Wimblett was detained for approximately 16 hours before being transported to Blackpool for interview; no further action was taken. He brought proceedings against Lancashire Constabulary alone, arguing that PC Wade had directly procured his wrongful arrest by circulating the PNCN. HHJ Beech dismissed the claim in the County Court at Preston, and Mr Wimblett appealed on the ground that the judge had failed to apply the Lifestyle Equities principles, a decision she had not referred to in her judgement.

Mrs Justice Dias, sitting in the King's Bench Division at Manchester, agreed that those principles required the earlier case law to be re-appraised. Applying a three-step test drawn from Lifestyle Equities, she held that in wrongful arrest cases the knowledge requirement at the third step relates only to the fact of the arrest itself: since false imprisonment is a tort of strict liability, an accessory need not have known of, or turned a blind eye to, the absence of a defence on the part of the arresting officer. The point had not previously been put beyond doubt.

The central question was whether PC Wade had procured the arrest. Mrs Justice Dias drew an important distinction between "direct order" cases, in which the accessory effectively makes the arrest through the ministerial agency of the arresting officer, and "briefing/information" cases, in which some element of wilful culpability on the part of the briefing officer is required before procurement can be established. A PNCN, she held, falls squarely within the latter category: it is not an instruction to arrest irrespective of circumstances, it preserves the arresting officer's independent discretion, and it does not carry the status of a warrant.

In briefing/information cases, wilful culpability will typically, though not exclusively, consist of dishonesty or deliberate lying. On the burden of proof, the Court held that the legal burden of proving procurement rests with the claimant throughout; any evidential burden on the defendant arises only once a prima facie case of procurement has been raised by the pleadings. This distinguishes briefing/information cases from direct order cases, where the burden of proving the lawfulness of the arrest falls on the defendant from the outset.

On the facts, none of Mr Wimblett's pleaded allegations was capable of raising a serious issue as to PC Wade's honesty. The prospect that cross-examination might have exposed the PNCN as founded on a tissue of lies was dismissed as fanciful, and the appeal was accordingly dismissed on reasoning that diverged from that of the county court below.

The judgement provides the most complete judicial synthesis to date of the relationship between direct order and briefing/information cases in the wrongful arrest context, and resolves the tension identified in earlier authorities between Copeland and Alford by treating them as examples of distinct categories rather than irreconcilable decisions.

[2026] EWHC 1586 (KB) | King's Bench Division, Manchester District Registry | Mrs Justice Dias DBE | Decided: 25 June 2026