Opinion ID: 1708952
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Justification Under Common Law

Text: Under the common law, a private citizen had legal justification or legal authority to make an arrest: (1) when, at the time of the arrest, a) a felony had in fact been committed, and b) the private citizen had probable cause to believe that the person whom he arrested had committed the felony. Maliniemi v Gronlund, 92 Mich 227-228. See People v Burt, 51 Mich 199, 202; 16 NW 378 (1883); or (2) when he responded to a person whom he knew to be a peace officer and acted in accordance with the officer's requests or commands regardless whether the officer had legal justification to arrest. Firestone v Rice, 71 Mich 377, 380-381; 38 NW 885 (1888). Accord, Prosser, supra, §§ 11 and 26, pp 42-49, 131-134. More specifically as to (1) above, Justice CAMPBELL noted when writing for a unanimous Court in People v Burt, 51 Mich 202: [N]o one, whether private person or officer, has any right to make an arrest without warrant in the absence of actual belief, based on actual facts creating probable cause of guilt. Suspicion without cause can never be an excuse for such action. The two must both exist, and be reasonably well founded. The same common-law rule was applied in a case in which a person instigated a police officer to make an arrest and the person arrested was found to be innocent. In Maliniemi, supra, 227-228, this Court unanimously held: A private person has a right to arrest a man on suspicion of felony without a warrant; but if he does so, and it turns out that the wrong man is imprisoned, he must be prepared to show in justification  First, that a felony has been committed; and, second, that the circumstances under which he acted were such that any reasonable person, acting without passion or prejudice, would have fairly suspected that the plaintiff committed it, or was implicated in it. (Original emphasis.) While the quotation from Maliniemi, supra, could be said to be dictum because the defendant's action was not justified by showing probable cause, justification was shown and recognized in Lynn v Weaver, 251 Mich 265, 267; 231 NW 579 (1930). In Lynn, the plaintiff, in the midst of a brawl, was arrested without a warrant by the defendant police officers and was briefly incarcerated. This Court observed: The facts in the case were all admitted, and it became solely a question of law for the trial judge to pass upon. The arrest was made in good faith upon proper and probable cause and wholly within the duty of defendants. It is thus clear that the common law of Michigan, at least prior to the enactment of 1927 PA 175, was that a mistaken arrest of an innocent plaintiff did not result in liability for false arrest if the defendant could show probable cause for making the arrest and if a felony had actually been committed.