Application across the book’s scenarios
| Scenario | Possible misfeasance analysis |
|---|---|
| Care assessment | A public officer knowingly applies an invented rule or suppresses an entitlement while knowing the act is unlawful and likely to injure the claimant, or being recklessly indifferent to both matters. |
| Care home or provider | A private employee is not ordinarily a public officer merely because services are publicly funded. The status, function and exercise of public power must be established. |
| Sheltered housing | A council housing officer may exercise public functions, but an unlawful housing decision is not misfeasance without the demanding bad-faith mental element and resulting loss. |
| Community support | Deliberate misuse of public commissioning or safeguarding power may qualify; ordinary delay, incompetence or resource dispute does not. |
| Child removal | Targeted fabrication or deliberate concealment by a public officer may engage the tort if unlawfulness, bad faith, probable injury and causation are proved, subject to the role of the court order. |
| What would usually be insufficient | Negligence, flawed reasoning, breach of statutory duty alone, an honest legal mistake, or failure to identify a responsible public officer. |
Misfeasance in public office is a demanding civil tort. The defendant must be a public officer exercising public power unlawfully, with targeted malice or knowledge that the act is unlawful and likely to injure the claimant—or reckless indifference to those matters—and the unlawful act must cause loss.
Denied care
The tort may be arguable where an officer knowingly invents a care-law rule, deliberately suppresses an entitlement or uses power for an improper purpose while knowing that the act is unlawful and likely to harm the claimant. Error, poor administration or even ordinary negligence is insufficient.
Removal without cause
Knowingly fabricated evidence, deliberate concealment of decisive exculpatory material or use of removal power for a knowingly improper purpose may satisfy the mental element if probable injury and causation are proved. The effect of any court order and judicial immunity questions require careful analysis.
Evidence
Prove the officer’s public function, exact unlawful act, source of legal knowledge, internal warnings, audit history, purpose, knowledge of probable injury and loss caused. The pleading must name the officer and state the bad-faith case precisely.