Malicious Prosecution အကြောင်း

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

မသမာစိတ်ဖြင့်တရားစွဲဆိုသည့်အတွက်လျော်ကြေးရလိုမှု

———————————————————-

မသမာစိတ်ဖြင့်ရာဇဝတ်ကြောင်းအရတရားစွဲဆိုသည့်အတွက်လျော်ကြေးရလိုမှုစွဲဆိုရာ၌တရားလိုသည်အောက်ပါအကြောင်းခြင်းရာများကိုသက်သေထင်ရှားပြရမည်ဟု၊တရားရုံးများလက်စွဲ(ပထမအကြိမ်နှင့်ဒုတိယအကြိမ်ထုတ်)တွင်စံစာအုပ်အဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ခဲ့သော”The Law Of Torts by Ratanlal and Dhirajlal”ကျမ်း(၂၂ကြိမ်မြောက်ထုတ်)(၁၉၉၂ခုနှစ်)စာမျက်နှာ၂၆၉-၂၇၀၌ဖော်ပြထားသည်။

“မသမာစိတ်ဖြင့်တရားစွဲဆိုသည့်အတွက်လျော်ကြေးရလိုမှုတွင်တရားစွဲဆိုရန်အကြောင်း”

[ In an action for malicious prosecution plaintiff must prove -

1. That he was prosecuted by the defendant.

2. That the proceedings complained of terminated in favour of the plaintiff if from their nature they were capable of so terminating.

3. That the prosecution was instituted against him without any reasonable or probable cause.

4. That the prosecution was instituted with a malicious intention, that is, not with the mere intention of carrying the law into effect, but with an intention which was wrongful in point of fact.

5. That he has suffered damage to his reputation or to the safety of person, or to the security of his property.]

အထက်ပါအကြောင်းအရာများသည်အမိန့်၇။နည်း၁(င)အရအဆိုပြုရန်လိုအပ်သည့်တရားစွဲဆိုရန်အကြောင်းကိုဖြစ်မြောက်စေသောအကြောင်းခြင်းရာများဖြစ်သည်။

တရားမပုံစံအမှတ်၃၁၌ပြဌာန်းထားသောအဆိုလွှာတွင်အထက်ပါအကြောင်းခြင်းရာများကိုအဆိုပြုထားကြောင်းတွေ့မြင်နိုင်သည်။

တရားလိုသည်ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွင်အဖမ်းမခံရပါကအဆိုလွှာအပိုဒ်၁၌၊တရားပြိုင်ကတရားလိုအား———————မြို့နယ်တရားရုံး၊၂၀———ခုနှစ်၊ရာဇဝတ်ကြီးမှုအမှတ်————တွင်၊ရာဇသတ်ကြီးပုဒ်မ—————-အရတရားစွဲဆိုခဲ့ပါသည်ဟုအဆိုပြုရန်ဖြစ်သည်။

————————————————————-

“MALICIOUS  PROSECUTION”၏အဓိပ္ပာယ်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[ 1. Introduction ]

“Define malicious prosecution.”

Malicious prosecution is an institution with malice against another of unsuccessful criminal or bankruptcy without a reasonable cause. 

It has two competing principles, namely the freedom that every person should have in bringing criminals to justice and the need for restraining false accusations against innocent persons.

2. Following are the essential conditions that plaintiff has to prove in an action for malicious prosecution:

(i) he was prosecuted by the defendant,

(ii) the proceedings complained of terminated in favour of the plaintiff if from their nature they were capable of so terminating,

(iti) the prosecution was instituted against him without any reasonable or probable cause,

(iv) the prosecution was instituted with malicious intention, and

(V) he has suffered damage to his reputation.

—————————————————

[ 2. Malice, Malice in fact and Malice in law ]

The word "Malice" in common acception means and implies "Spite" or "ill-will". 

The legal meaning of "Malice" is "ill-will or spite towards a party and any indirect or improper motive in taking an action". 

This is sometimes described as "Malice in fact.”

Legal "Malice" or "Malice in law" means "something done without lawful excuse". 

In otherwords, "it is an act done wrongfully and wilfully without reasonable or probable cause, and not necessarily an act done from ill-feeling and spite. 

It is deliberate act in disregard of the rights of others.”

————————————————-

[ 3. Essentials of Malicious Prosecution ]

There are two elements for the prosecution-

first the plaintiff has been prosecuted and second, the defendant has prosecuted the plaintiff. Legal proceedings have thus started with the judicial authority.

Proceedings may envelope both types of prosecution i.e., criminal as well as civil. 

Here we can understand this aspect that at what stage the proceedings start with the illustration of case Bolandanda Premayya v. Ayaradara,MANU/KA/0097/1966 : AIR 1966 Kant 13.-

Defendant made a complaint with the police that plaintiff has committed a theft in his house. 

Police called both i.e., plaintiff as well as defendant in the police station and recorded their statements. 

The sub-inspector then made a search in plaintiff's house. 

But the police found the complaint to be false. 

The plaintiff filed a suit for damages against the defendant in the civil court for malicious prosecution. 

The court rejected this plea on this ground that mere filing of complaint with the police doesn't amount to prosecution.

It starts only, when some judicial authority is set in motion as a consequence of such complaint. 

The suit failed.

So, at what stage, the prosecution commences before the judicial authority, there are two views on this point:

(a) the prosecution starts as soon as the complaint is made or charge is laid before the judicial authority. In Balbhaddar Singh v. Badri Shah, AIR 1926 PC 46, it was observed that the charge should have been acted upon and process issued by the judicial authority.

(b) the prosecution commences not at the stage when the complaint is made or charge is laid before the judicial authority, but at the stage when some process has been issued by such authority for the plaintiff to appear.

In the case Mod. Amin v. Jogender Kumar Banerjee, AIR 1947 PC 108, the plaintiff agreed to sell certain property to defendant who was going to form a company, but later on he backtracked to do so. 

On a complaint from defendant, the Magistrate after examining it on oath, held an inquiry in the open court under section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898. 

The plaintiff was accordingly summoned and he appeared with his lawyer.

Thereafter, the Magistrate dismissed the complaint as a result of preliminary enquiry. 

The plaintiff brought a suit against the defendant for damages for malicious prosecution. 

The Privy Council held-

"the action for damages for malicious prosecution is part of the common law of England, administered by the High Court at Calcutta. The foundation of the action lies in abuse of process of the court by wrongfully setting the law in motion and it is designed to discourage the perversion of the machinery of 

justice for an improper purpose.”

After stating the basis for the tort of malicious prosecution, Sir John Beaumont, J; of the Privy Council laid down the principle of determining the stage at which prosecution commences. He said-

"To find an action for damages for malicious prosecution based upon criminal proceeding, the test is not whether the criminal proceedings may be correctly described as prosecution, the test is whether such proceedings have reached a stage at which damage to the plaintiff results. In this case the Magistrate took cognizance of the complaint, examined the complainant on the oath, held an enquiry in open court under section 202 which the plaintiff attended, and, at which the learned judge had found he incurred costs in defending himself. The plaint alleged the institution of criminal proceedings of a character necessarily involving damage to reputation and gave particulars of special damage alleged to have been suffered by the plaintiff. Their Lordships think that action was well founded, and on the findings at the trial the plaintiff is entitled to judgment.”

In criminal proceedings,malicious prosecution commences,when such proceedings have reached a stage at which damage to plaintiff results.

————————————————

AIR (34) 1947 Privy Council 108

Mohd. Amin v. Jogendra Kumar

 LORD UTHWATI, SIR MADHAVAN NAIR ,  AND SIR JOHN BEAUMONT.

အမှုတွင်၊မိမိ၏အကျိုးစီးပွါးတို့ကိုထိခိုက်နစ်နာခြင်းမရှိစေရန်စောင့်ထိန်းခြင်း၊ကာကွယ်ခြင်းလက်စားချေခြင်းတို့ကိုတရားဥပဒေဘောင်အတွင်းမှပြုလုပ်ခြင်းသည်လူတိုင်းလူတိုင်းတို့၏အခွင့်အရေးဖြစ်သည်။

သို့သော်လည်းတရားဥပဒေကိုခုတုံးလုပ်ပြီးမိမိ၏နစ်နာမှုကိုကျေနပ်ချက်ရနိုင်ရန်အတွက်တဦးတယောက်ကိုဖိနှိပ်ချုပ်ခြယ်ခြင်းပြုလုပ်ခဲ့လျှင်မတော်မတရားသောနည်းဖြင့်ပြုလုပ်သည်ဟုယူဆနိုင်ကြောင်းပရီဗီကောင်စီကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းထုံးဖွဲ့သည်-

[16] The action for damages for malicious pros ecution is part of the common law of England, administered by the High Court at Calcutta under its letters patent. 

The foundation of the action lies in abuse of the process of the Court by wrongfully setting the law in motion and it is designed to discourage the perversion of the machinery of justice for an improper purpose. 

The plaintiff must prove that the proceedings instituted against him were malicious, without reasonable and probable cause, that they terminated in his favour (if that be possible), and that he has  suffered damage. 

As long ago as 1698 it was held by Holt C. J. in 1 Ld. Raym. 374 that damages might be claimed in such an action under three heads, (1) damage to the person, (2) damage to property, and (3) damage to reputation, and that rule has prevailed ever since. 

That the word "prosecution" in the title of the action is not used, in the technical sense which it bears in criminal law is shown by the fact that the action lies for the malicions prosecution of certain classes of civIl proceedings, for instance falsely and maliciously presenting a petition in bankruptcy or a perition to wind up a company: (1883) 11 Q.B.D. 674. 

The reason why the action does not lie for falsely and maliciously prosecuting an ordinary civil action is, as explained by Bowen L. J. in the last mentioned case, that such a case does not necessarily and naturally involve damage to the party sued. 

A civil action which is false will be dismissed at the hearing.

The defendant’s reputation will be cleared of any imputations made against him, and he will be indemnified against his expenses by the award damages for mental anxiety, or for extra costs incurred beyond those imposed on the unsuccessful party.

But a criminal charge involving scandal to reputation or the possible loss of life or liberty to the party charged does necessarily and naturally involve damage and in such a case damage to reputation will be presumed.

——————————————-

14 Ran 633 

U BA HLAING V. BALABUX SODANI.*

Before Sir Ernest H. Goodman Roberts, Kt., Chief Justice, and Mr. Justice Dunkley.

အမှုတွင်၊စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၆၃၇နှင့်၆၃၈၌၊ခုံရုံးက”inquiry” နှင့် “judicial proceeding” အကြောင်းကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်သည်-

[ "Inquiry " is defined in section 4, sub-section (1), clause (k), of the Code, which is as follows:

“Inquiry includes every inquiry other than a trial conducted under this Code by a Magistrate or Court."

“Judicial Proceeding " is defined in section 4 (1) (m) of the Code, and is as follows :

“Judicial proceeding includes any proceeding in the course of which evidence is or may be legally taken on oath."

It is, therefore, clear that every inquiry or trial is a judicial proceeding, but every judicial proceeding under the Code is not an inquiry or trial. 

The provisions of numerous sections show that the Code contemplates proceedings which are neither an inquiry nor or a trial, e.g., sections 94, 95, 503, 506, 509 and 511. ]

————————————————-

အထက်ဖော်ပြပါစီရင်ထုံးအားအိန္ဒိယနိုင်ငံမှထုတ်ဝေသော A I R ( Rangoon Section )တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြရည်ညွှန်းသည်-

A. I. R. 1937 Rangoon 42

U Ba Hlaing--Applicant.

                  V.

Balabux Sodani - Opposite Party.

ROBERTS, C. J. AND DUNKLEY, J.

————————————————————-

1940 Rangoon Law Reports 631 

DAW YON V. U MIN SIN.*

Before Mr. Justice Mya Bu, and Mr. Justice Mosely.

အမှုတွင်မြန်မာတရားသူကြီးဦးမြဘူးနှင့်အင်္ဂလိပ်တရားသူကြီး Mosely တို့ပါဝင်သောခုံရုံးကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်ဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

[ When a prosecutor launches a prosecution based upon a statement which he knows to be untrue, and for which there is no reasonable and probable cause, that very circumstance would raise the inference that there was malice in his instituting the prosecution.

.

If a person has laid. all the facts of his case fairly before his lawyer and has launched a criminal prosecution acting bong fide upon the advice of the lawyer, he would not be liable to an action for damages for malicious prosecution.

But where he launches the prosecution upon certain facts which he knows or must have known to be untrue, he cannot take shelter under his lawyer's advice. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၆၃၆နှင့်၆၃၇၌၊ခုံရုံးကပရီဗီကောင်စီ၏စီရင်ထုံးတရပ်ကိုရည်ညွှန်း၍အောက်ပါအတိုင်းသုံးသပ်သည်-

[ In the Privy Council case of Albert Bonnan v. Imperial TobaccoCompany of India, Limited (1), A.I.R. (1929) P.C. 222, 223. their Lordships observed:

“Their Lordships have no doubt that it was in reliance upon the expert advice so received from London that the proceedings were instituted, and that though, as the event proved, that advice was wrong it would be impossible rightly to hold that the respondents in acting upon it had no reasonable or probable cause for the course they took." ]

—————————————————-