## Facts

- A 16-year-old freshman at a private university decided to withdraw and leave campus after becoming dissatisfied with school and social life.
- She withdrew approximately $1,300 from a campus bank and bought train tickets to leave Milwaukee with a friend.
- A bank representative notified the dean of women’s office that the student said she was leaving school.
- A dormitory official contacted the student’s father and reported that the student intended to leave school to marry an older man.
- University officials, unable to promptly reach the father, consulted the university physician, who suggested using Wisconsin’s emergency mental-health detention statute for temporary custody of a person believed mentally irresponsible and dangerous.
- University officials completed an application for temporary custody under the statute; police took the student to a hospital mental ward pursuant to that process.
- The father arrived in Milwaukee, and the student was released the next morning.
- The student sued the university and officials for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution; the trial court dismissed malicious prosecution, submitted false imprisonment to the jury, and entered judgment for the student on that verdict.

## Issues

1. Whether initiating an emergency mental-health detention through statutory procedures can support a false-imprisonment claim, or whether confinement under lawful process precludes that tort.
2. Whether the record instead presented an abuse-of-process theory—misuse of statutory detention for an ulterior purpose—and, if so, whether the real controversy was fully tried.

## Decision

- The supreme court reversed the judgment for the plaintiff on false imprisonment.
- The court held the plaintiff did not prove false imprisonment because the confinement occurred through a facially authorized statutory detention process, making the restraint “lawful” for purposes of that tort.
- The court concluded the evidence raised a substantial question of abuse of process—use of properly issued legal process for an ulterior purpose not intended by law.
- Exercising its interest-of-justice authority, the court remanded for a new trial so the abuse-of-process controversy could be tried.

## Legal Principles

- False imprisonment requires unlawful restraint of physical liberty; confinement effectuated through lawful arrest or statutory authority is not false imprisonment, even if the authority is allegedly misused.
- Conduct that instigates confinement under valid legal process may instead support other tort theories, including malicious prosecution or abuse of process, depending on the nature of the misuse.
- Malicious prosecution concerns initiating proceedings without probable cause and with malice; abuse of process concerns using legal process properly issued for an ulterior purpose outside the process’s intended function.
- An appellate court may order a new trial in the interest of justice when the case was tried on an incorrect theory and the real controversy was not fully tried.

## Conclusion

Because the student’s brief hospitalization resulted from a statutory emergency detention process rather than an extralegal restraint, the verdict for false imprisonment could not stand; however, the record supported trying whether university officials misused the detention procedure for an ulterior purpose, requiring a new trial on abuse of process.


Maniaci v. Marquette Univ., 50 Wis. 2d 287, 184 N.W.2d 168 (Wis. 1971)