False Imprisonment. The jealous watchfulness of the common law of England for the protection and preservation of personal liberty is nowhere proved more distinctly than in the provisions of the law respecting what is technically called false imprisonment. In their extent and fulness they are quite peculiar to that law; and while the principles on which they rest, and some of the rules derived from them, may be discerned even in Saxon times, they have certainly been developed and systematized in later ages, as the worth of personal liberty became more accurately estimated and the means of preserving it better understood. False imprisonment, in the law of England and the United States, may now be defined as any intentional and unlawful restraint of a person. It may be: 1, the restraint or arrest of a person under color of law, by means of an illegal or insufficient process; 2, such restraint or arrest by means of a legal instrument, but at an illegal time, as on Sunday or any other day generally prohibited, or at any time which is illegal and unauthorized in respect to the person restrained; 3, without color or pretence of law, as when one confines another to his room or house without legal authority to do so.

False imprisonment may be with force or wholly without force; as if one, without touching another, by words only, or even by gestures only, compels him by fear to abstain from going where he has a right to go, or to go where he wishes not to go and is under no obligation to go. It is false imprisonment to confront a man in the street, and, without touching him, constrain him to arrest his course or change it against his will.-The remedies for false imprisonment are threefold: 1, an action for trespass vi et armis, when the party imprisoned may recover not only such damages as are capable of being estimated on the evidence, but such further sum as the jury, in cases where the party had no reason to believe his conduct lawful, may consider proportioned to the character of the wrong; 2, the writ of habeas corpus for immediate relief from the restraint; 3, indictment at common law for false imprisonment of any kind, for which the guilty party may be severely punished. In some of the United States there are various statutory provisions respecting certain kinds of false imprisonment.