Whittaker v. Sandford

Facts

Plaintiff was a member of a religious organization of which her husband was a minister and Defendant was the head. The group was based in Tel Aviv, but Plaintiff decided she would like to leave the group and return to the United States with her children. Defendant offered to grant them passage aboard his yacht and promised that they would not be detained when Plaintiff expressed concern that he would refuse to let her leave the ship. When they arrived, Defendant refuse to let Plaintiff use a boat to reach the shore and said it was up to her husband to decide whether she should be allowed to do so. Plaintiff’s husband, in turn, said that it was up to Defendant to decide. Although Plaintiff was occasionally allowed to leave the yacht briefly, she was always supervised and was only able to reach the United States after she secured a writ of habeas corpus. She sued Defendant for false imprisonment. At trial, the court instructed the jury that while physical restraint was a necessa ry element of false imprisonment, actual physical force need not have been used.