Appellant-plaintiff instituted an action for false imprisonment. Named as defendants in the action were Burke Furniture Company (Burke), who is not a party to this appeal, and appellee Sadlo, who is a police officer. Appellant appeals from the grant of summary judgment to appellee Sadlo.
The facts are essentially undisputed and are as follows: Burke accepted from one of its customers a check which ultimately proved to be stolen and forged. The Burke employee who accepted the check identified appellant, who had previously done business with the furniture company, as the person who had tendered it. Burke informed the police, providing them with appellant’s name and address. After she was contacted by a detective, appellant voluntarily presented herself for questioning at the police station. She was informed, however, that she would have to see appellee, the officer handling the case, and that she should return to the station the following morning to do so.
According to appellee’s deposition, that evening he received two telephone calls informing him that appellant was apparently preparing to leave town. Both phone calls to appellee were from employees of Burke, the store that had initiated the investigation of appellant. In fact, one of the callers was the same Burke employee who had made the initial contact with appellee. The testimony of neither of the two Burke employees who purportedly telephoned appellee regarding appellant’s impending flight appears in the record. However, according to appellee, based solely upon the information related to him in the telephone calls, he called the police station “and told them to have somebody sent out to [appellant’s] apartment to see about picking her up.”
Acting on appellee’s telephone call, other officers that night arrested appellant without a warrant. According to appellant’s deposition, she was undressed at the time of her arrest and in bed speaking by phone with a friend. Appellant testified that none of the arresting officers informed her that they had been told she was trying to leave town and that the first time she knew that this was the alleged basis for her arrest was when the subject was raised at her deposition. After her warrantless arrest, appellant was incarcerated and charges of theft and forgery were brought against her. These charges were ultimately dismissed for lack of prosecution.
Based upon this evidence, the trial court entered an order on appellee’s motion for summary judgment “find[ing] that defendant Charles J. Sadlo had probable cause for his action as to Plaintiff *318 Brendell Collins and there is no genuine issue to any material fact as to Defendant Sadlo . . .” (Emphasis supplied.)
“False imprisonment is the unlawful detention of the person of another, for any length of time, whereby such person is deprived of his personal liberty.” OCGA § 51-7-20 (Code Ann. § 105-901). “In an action to recover damages for an illegal arrest and false imprisonment the only essential elements of the action are
the arrest or detention and the unlawfulness thereof.”
(Emphasis supplied.)
Conoly v. Imperial Tobacco Co.,
The instant case involves the alleged false imprisonment of appellant pursuant to her arrest by police officers acting without a warrant. Where the alleged unlawful detention is premised upon an arrest by officers acting without a warrant, the following legal principles are applicable: “ ‘Whoever arrests or imprisons a person without a warrant is guilty of a tort,
unless he can justify under some of the exceptions in which arrest and imprisonment without a warrant are permitted by law;
and the burden of proving the existence of the facts raising the exception is upon the person making the arrest or inflicting the imprisonment.’ [Cits.]...
Where the arrest is without a warrant and is illegal, no amount of good faith or probable cause will excuse the defendants.
[Cits.]” (Emphasis supplied.)
Vlass v. McCrary,
It is thus clear that, unlike an action for malicious arrest instituted pursuant to OCGA § 51-7-1 (Code Ann. § 105-1001), in a false imprisonment case premised upon a warrantless arrest, the mere existence of probable cause standing alone has no real defensive bearing on the issue of liability. See
Holliday v. Coleman,
Stewart v. Williams,
In the instant case, the trial court’s order found “probable cause” as the justification for appellee’s actions and granted summary judgment on that basis. It is not clear whether the trial court’s reference to “probable cause” was employed to mean the reasonable belief that appellant had committed a crime (see generally
Quinn v. State,
Appellant’s alleged crime did not occur in the presence of or within the immediate knowledge of any officer.
Piedmont Hotel Co. v. Henderson,
“[I]n making a warrantless arrest an officer ‘may rely upon information received through an informant, rather than upon his direct observations,
so long as the informant’s statement is reasonably corroborated by other matters within the officer’s knowledge.’
[Cit.]” (Emphasis supplied.) Illinois v. Gates, - U. S. — (103 SC 2317, 76 LE2d 527, 550) (1983). In contrast to those situations exemplified by cases such as
Morgan v. State,
Judgment reversed.