## Facts

- Kingston police officers responded to a complaint about boisterous individuals behind a commercial building and found Donald C. Parvi and two others who appeared intoxicated.
- The officers told the group to move on or be jailed; one man ran, and Parvi remained with the other man, who said they had no place to go.
- The officers ordered Parvi and the other man into a patrol car and drove them outside the city to an unlit, isolated area near an abandoned golf course by the New York State Thruway.
- Parvi entered the car when ordered and, during the drive, asked to be let off elsewhere; the officers refused and left the men at the drop-off without directions or other safety measures.
- About an hour later, the men reached the Thruway right-of-way; the other man was killed, and Parvi was struck by a car and seriously injured.
- Parvi sued the City for false imprisonment and negligence; at trial he testified that he had little or no recollection of the events.
- The trial court dismissed both claims at the close of plaintiff’s proof for failure to establish a prima facie case; the Appellate Division affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff’s inability to remember the incident defeats a false imprisonment claim by negating the requirement that the plaintiff be conscious of the confinement.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient for a jury to find the City negligent where officers took custody of an intoxicated person and left him in an isolated location near a high-speed highway.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal and reinstated both causes of action for trial.
- On false imprisonment, the court held that “consciousness of confinement” is required, but later recollection is not; the record permitted a jury to infer contemporaneous awareness and nonconsensual confinement.
- On negligence, the court held that once officers took custody of an intoxicated person, they owed a duty of reasonable care, and a jury could find breach and proximate cause based on abandoning him near the Thruway.
- The case was remanded for a new trial, with leave for the City to amend its answer to assert justification as an affirmative defense.

## Legal Principles

- False imprisonment requires: (1) intent to confine, (2) consciousness of confinement at the time, (3) lack of consent, and (4) lack of privilege.
- A plaintiff’s later inability to remember the confinement does not, as a matter of law, defeat false imprisonment if the factfinder can infer contemporaneous awareness from circumstantial evidence.
- When police take custody or otherwise control an intoxicated person, they assume a duty to use reasonable care for that person’s safety.
- A defendant may be liable in negligence for affirmatively creating or increasing a foreseeable risk of harm, including by relocating a vulnerable person and abandoning him in a dangerous environment.
- Justification or privilege for confinement is generally an affirmative defense to be pleaded and proved by the defendant.

## Conclusion

The court held that memory loss does not bar a false imprisonment claim where the evidence permits an inference that the plaintiff was aware of confinement when it occurred, and that police may be found negligent for abandoning an intoxicated person in a location where injury from nearby highway traffic is a foreseeable result.


Parvi v. City of Kingston, 41 N.Y.2d 553 (N.Y. 1977)