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Crime does not pay, but does tort? Lewis-Ranwell v G4S Health Services (UK) Ltd [2026] UKSC 2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2026

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Achas K Burin*
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Extract

Alexander Lewis-Ranwell killed three people while suffering a psychotic episode. He brought a claim against several defendants who failed to detain him prior to this tragic incident. Following the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lewis-Ranwell v G4S Health Services,1 his claim in negligence was barred for illegality. The case is significant because it is the first time the UK Supreme Court has confronted the effect of an acquittal for insanity on a tort claim for damages arising out of the crime.2 Its answer to the question posed in the title of this case note – even if crime does not pay, does tort law? – was thus ‘no’.

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Current Developments: Case Comment
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Legal Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 6
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Introduction

Alexander Lewis-Ranwell killed three people while suffering a psychotic episode. He brought a claim against several defendants who failed to detain him prior to this tragic incident. Following the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lewis-Ranwell v G4S Health Services,Footnote 1 his claim in negligence was barred for illegality. The case is significant because it is the first time the UK Supreme Court has confronted the effect of an acquittal for insanity on a tort claim for damages arising out of the crime.Footnote 2 Its answer to the question posed in the title of this case note – even if crime does not pay, does tort law? – was thus ‘no’.

The judgment emphasised there is a ‘a clear rule that unlawful killing never pays’.Footnote 3 The Supreme Court said:

[M]embers of the public would be profoundly surprised and concerned if [the claimant] were able to claim for the consequences of his wrongful act. We do not agree that surprise and concern would be limited to those who are not fair-minded or humane or to those who have an unenlightened attitude towards mental illness.Footnote 4

This dictum was addressing the issue of public confidence in the justice system should a killer be compensated. A previous Supreme Court precedent (Henderson, echoing the landmark House of Lords judgment, Gray) had emphasised that public confidence in the justice system was an important public policy.Footnote 5 The Supreme Court’s references in this quotation to ‘fair-minded’ and ‘humane’ people were references to the majority judgments in the Court of Appeal.Footnote 6 Underhill LJ for the Court of Appeal had concluded:

The values of our society are not reflected by debarring a claimant from seeking compensation in this kind of case. It is necessary, as Santow JA accepted [in an analogous Australian precedent] to go beyond ‘instinctive recoil’ and to consider what justice truly requires in a situation which most humane and fair-minded people would recognise as far from straightforward.Footnote 7

The Supreme Court overturned the judgment of the Court of Appeal. These two quotations from the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, while diametrically opposed, embody the central debate in Lewis-Ranwell. This debate, as Underhill LJ stated, is replicated in analogous cases around the common law world.

This case note addresses this central debate in two stages. First, Lewis-Ranwell is put in its domestic doctrinal context. Having found that doctrine alone cannot explain these diametrically opposed views, the case note examines the debate from the perspective of legal philosophy. From the doctrinal analysis stage, we see that an old test for illegality, that of public conscience, still lurks in modern-day references to public policy. The philosophical section of the case note then explains that the Lewis-Ranwell judgment – and the illegality doctrine more generally – grapples with upholding law’s claim to moral authority (as Joseph Raz called it) while attempting to also do justice in individual cases.

1. Doctrinal development before, and in, Lewis-Ranwell

The key issue in Lewis-Ranwell was the effect of the insanity defence, and his acquittal, on his tort claim. This part of the case note puts Lewis-Ranwell in its doctrinal context. The facts of Lewis-Ranwell resembled prior appellate decisions on the illegality doctrine as applied to unlawful killing. However, those decisions – Henderson,Footnote 8 Clunis,Footnote 9 Gray,Footnote 10 among others – all concerned claimants who had been convicted of killing with diminished responsibility. Thus any reference to insanity in those judgments was obiter. Despite this, the facts and disposal of all these cases were very similar.

Those three appellate-level judgments had previously established that public policy barred tort claims. In each of the cases – Clunis (CA), Gray (HL) and Henderson (SC) – the claimants pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. In all cases, the crimes were committed while the claimant was severely mentally unwell. In all cases, as with Lewis-Ranwell,Footnote 11 the disposal of the criminal court was identical, namely a hospital order and a restriction orderFootnote 12 which had the effect of detaining the patient in a secure hospital for mental health treatment. Should the patient recover, they would be discharged into the community without needing to serve a further penal sentence.Footnote 13

There were minor differences between the cases. The heads of loss were not precisely identical, nor were the defendant organisations. The defendants in Clunis and Henderson were the public health authorities in whose care the claimants had been – as with Lewis-Ranwell – while Gray’s claim was against the negligent defendant who had caused the accident from which his mental illness arose. The alleged negligence in Clunis, Henderson and Lewis-Ranwell was a failure to adequately treat and/or detain the claimant prior to the crime. All claimants sought damages wholly or partly arising from their own crime or its consequences – such as their loss of earnings and loss of reputation consequent on detention or feelings of guilt and remorse. Specifically, however, the claim for an indemnity against damages owed to victims of the crime received particular attention in Gray and Lewis-Ranwell; in either case, this head of loss was disallowed.Footnote 14

The major difference between earlier cases and Lewis-Ranwell concerned his insanity defence and consequent acquittal. Previously, the partial defence of diminished responsibility resulted in convictions for manslaughter of Clunis, Henderson and Gray. There had been obiter comments from lower courts in prior cases,Footnote 15 together with authority from other common law jurisdictions,Footnote 16 that dealt differently with insane claimants. It might be thought, then, that tort doctrine would be led by criminal law doctrine.

However, this was not to be. In Lewis-Ranwell, the Supreme Court was adamant that ‘the distinctions drawn in criminal law between diminished responsibility and insanity cannot be permitted to govern the scope of the illegality defence in civil proceedings’.Footnote 17 This was a crucial point of difference between the Supreme Court and courts below. The Court of Appeal had reasoned that the effect of an insanity defence was acquittal so that there was no inconsistency introduced into the legal system by allowing a tort claim.Footnote 18 However, the Supreme Court held that this was wrong.Footnote 19 The Supreme Court favoured considering broad policy rather than criminal-law distinctions. Further, the Court of Appeal erred in placing too much weight on the claimant’s lack of moral culpability.Footnote 20 This latter concern reflects a discomfort in debarring claims from those suffering with severe mental illness on the grounds that they have done wrong. It is for this reason, perhaps, that there have been numerous decisions in recent yearsFootnote 21 addressing and re-addressing the law – but with little change.

Instead, applying the trio of factors from Patel v Mirza Footnote 22 led the Supreme Court to reject Lewis-Ranwell’s claim. Lords Hodge and Lloyd-Jones gave the unanimous judgment, finding that two public policies in particular would be enhanced by denying the claim.Footnote 23 The policies were: maintaining public confidence, and maintaining the integrity of the legal system, which underlay the prohibition Lewis-Ranwell transgressed (said, in Biblical language, to be ‘you shall not kill’).Footnote 24

First, compensating the claimant for detention would be inconsistent with the rule requiring the judge to make the orders for mental health treatment.Footnote 25 This reflects dicta in Gray.Footnote 26 Secondly, there was public interest in the public condemnation of unlawful killing, and in the state acknowledging the wrong done to victims and their families.Footnote 27 This develops dicta in Henderson. Thirdly, finding that Lewis-Ranwell was the victim of a tort was said to be inconsistent with his tortious liability to his deceased victims’ estates and dependents.Footnote 28

To complete the Patel trio, there were few countervailing interests which would be rendered less effective by denying the claim. Whilst it was important that courts adjudicated civil wrongs, other types of proceedings such as inquests and public inquiries could fulfil this function.Footnote 29 Rejecting the claim was not inconsistent with the verdict of the criminal court,Footnote 30 and it was proportionate to reject it.Footnote 31

The result in Lewis-Ranwell may seem doctrinally unsurprising. After all, it was only recently that a seven-justice panel in Henderson could not be persuaded to distinguish, or overrule, Gray. Considerations about the allocation of public funds may make it even less surprising.Footnote 32 Nevertheless, a few factors suggest the result could have been otherwise. They include: the various references in the judgments to modern-day attitudes on mental health; the repeated appeals over the past 30 years on similar facts; the divergent outcomes between lower courts and the Supreme Court – as well as between comparable Commonwealth precedents. All this suggests the result was not doctrinally foreordained. Is there something deeper than doctrine, then, which helps explain the result?

The disagreement between the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal on the anticipated public reaction is reminiscent of a discussion in the now-deprecated case of Tinsley v Milligan.Footnote 33 In Tinsley, Lord Browne-Wilkinson said that the public conscience was ‘an imponderable’Footnote 34 and seemed to assume it required guesswork about public attitudes. By contrast, Lord Goff treated the ‘conscience’ as being that of the courtFootnote 35 although he rejected a discretion based on conscience in favour of a reliance-based test for illegality (which is no longer good law). In my view, the ‘conscience’ in question is clearly that of the court. The Lewis-Ranwell judgment – and the illegality doctrine more generally – grapples with law’s claim to moral authority.

In what follows, I will suggest that the idea of public conscience still lurks in modern-day references to public policy. Its relevance is explained by law’s claim to moral authority. In Henderson, echoing Gray, public confidence in the justice system was said to be a public policy.Footnote 36 In substance, ‘public confidence’Footnote 37 sounds a lot like ‘public conscience’, but now reduced to one factor among many under Patel v Mirza.Footnote 38 Evidently, public conscience is no longer the freestanding test for illegality, but nor has it gone for good.

2. A philosophical explanation

The denial of Lewis-Ranwell’s claim and focus on law’s coherence can be explained by reference to a philosophical argument that law claims moral authority.Footnote 39 Putting this another way, the idea is that law’s officials make a claim on behalf of the legal system that the demands of the legal system are genuine demands of morality.Footnote 40 According to law, its subjects ought to refrain from killing because the law says so.Footnote 41 Of course, ‘the law’ cannot speak, so the demand is made by law’s officials – among them, judges. Rarely is the claim made explicitly in the form stated here. Rather, the claim is made implicitly in judges’ reasoning. There is plenty of this in evidence in the Lewis-Ranwell case, for example: ‘Killing another human being without lawful justification breaches a fundamental moral rule in our society – you shall not kill.’Footnote 42

Now, individuals’ views may differ on what morality requires from someone experiencing psychosis – but that is not the point. The point is that law demands the same behaviour from everybody, and this is a claim about law dressed up in moral clothes. Criminal law may decline to punish – severely or at all – those with mental illness, but law’s primary rules of conduct remain the same for everyone. The Supreme Court was giving effect to law’s claim of moral authority by denying Lewis-Ranwell compensation and instead reinforcing the ‘public condemnation of unlawful killing’ and the ‘state acknowledgement of the grievous wrong done to victims’Footnote 43 (etc). In Henderson, similarly, it was said that the law should not be brought into disrepute.Footnote 44

Calling this an explanation is not the same as arguing that Lewis-Ranwell is correct, or that legal theorists must agree with it, or that theory makes the result inevitable. Legal philosophy can help explain judicial behaviour without endorsing it or providing a mandate for what doctrine should be.Footnote 45 The explanation is only that judges in Lewis-Ranwell, and in adjudicating on the illegality doctrine more generally, are grappling with law’s claim to moral authority. When balancing public policies, judges must uphold the claim that law has moral force. If there is a risk of undermining the claim to moral authority, the illegality defence must be upheld or else some moral explanation must be given as to how tort law can justifiably pursue a different moral course of action to the criminal law. It is for this reason that the Supreme Court was so concerned with ‘public confidence’.

This is why the ‘imponderable’Footnote 46 (per Lord Browne-Wilkinson) of public conscience has not gone away. It may seem unedifying that the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court were at odds with each other over what the expected public reaction would be. However, the explanation advanced here is that we should see this disagreement as a manifestation of judges navigating law’s claim to moral authority. The point is that legal officials must always be sensitive to law’s uptake, to its efficacy, to whether it sets clear rules for law’s subjects. Judges may make incorrect assessments in the course of this exercise, but they would not be acting as legal officials if they were indifferent to such things. Law makes a moral claim on officials too, and the claim is such that they must give appropriate acknowledgement in their rulings to the legal prohibition on killing – which law presents as a moral prohibition.

At the same time, were a judge to determine a claimant’s moral entitlement through an inquiry into their culpability on moral grounds alone, this would be to abandon legal standards for moral ones. As Lord Sumption said in a different case – also involving unlawful killing but in the rather different context of assisted dying: ‘It is not [judges’] function to lay down principles of morality.’Footnote 47 This is why the Supreme Court held that it is an error of law to focus overmuch on a particular claimant’s moral culpability. The Supreme Court certainly had available legal tools to distinguish insane claimants from convicted claimants; however, the Court ultimately considered that this road was not open to it.

The compulsion to claim that law has moral force is very strong in cases of unlawful killing (a paradigmatic legal and moral wrong), but will diminish as the illegality concerned becomes more trivial. In the appropriate case, the illegality may be so trivial that the defence is not engaged at all (‘the threshold question’). In their role as officials, judges must be sensitive to the likely consequences of their judgments and yet may not be well-equipped institutionally to accurately gauge public response. Parliament, by contrast, is very well-placed to be sensitive to public opinion when passing laws.Footnote 48 It may be that reform can only be achieved by a decisive tie-breaker like legislation where matters of moral complexity are concerned.

Conclusion

Cases such as Clunis, Gray, Henderson and Lewis-Ranwell highlight the difficulty in deciding the correct response in private law when someone has committed crime during a mental health crisis. Criminal law has its established approaches, like the insanity and diminished responsibility defences. These defences in turn ground conclusions on the offender’s responsibility. Lewis-Ranwell shows us how tort law deals with the same facts, which is to turn away from responsibility – going as far as saying that it is an error of law to focus overmuch on personal responsibility. Tort law instead is concerned with public policy, though we may worry that this is simply guesswork about public attitudes. Nevertheless, a legal-philosophical approach demonstrates that the guesswork is itself symptomatic of law’s claim to moral authority.

Footnotes

†

Many thanks to Hayley Hooper and Shreya Atrey for extremely helpful and extraordinarily prompt comments on a draft. All errors naturally remain my own.

References

1 Lewis-Ranwell v G4S Health Services (UK) Ltd [2026] UKSC 2, [2026] 2 WLR 187, at [8].

2 The novelty of the issue is acknowledged in Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [105], [120].

3 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [143]; also [88] (paraphrasing Henderson v Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust [2020] UKSC 43, [2021] AC 563, at [131]).

4 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [151].

5 Henderson, above n 3, at [58], [119].

6 Lewis-Ranwell v G4S [2024] EWCA Civ 138 (Lewis-Ranwell CA) at [103]–[104] per Underhill LJ, [161] per Dame Victoria Sharp P.

7 Ibid, at [104].

8 Henderson, above n 3.

9 Clunis v Camden and Islington Health Authority [1998] QB 978.

10 Gray v Thames Trains [2009] UKHL 33, [2009] AC 1339.

11 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [14].

12 Mental Health Act 1983, ss 37, 41.

13 R v Calocane [2024] 4 All ER 1063, at [63].

14 Gray, above n 10, at [51] and [55]; Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [148]–[149].

15 eg Clunis, above n 9, at 989E–G and 990D–E, and Traylor v Kent and Medway NHS Social Care Partnership Trust [2022] EWHC 260 (QB), [2022] 4 WLR 35, at [119] and [112]–[114].

16 eg Hunter Area Health Service v Presland [2005] NSWCA 33, (2005) 63 NSWLR 22; Ellis v Counties Manukau District Health Board [2006] NZHC 826, [2007] 1 NZLR 196; Barker v Barker 2022 ONCA 567; Boruschewitz v Kirts (1990) 554 NE 2d 1112 and Bruscato v O’Brien (2010) 705 SE 2d 275, (2011) 715 SE 2d 120.

17 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [157]; see also [165].

18 Lewis-Ranwell CA, above n 6, at [93] and [95] per Underhill LJ, [139] and [161] per Dame Victoria Sharp P. For a summary of the Court of Appeal’s decision, see M Griffiths and A Burin ‘Ex turpi defence fails where claimant acquitted for insanity: Lewis-Ranwell v G4S in the Court of Appeal’ (12 KBW Personal InjuryLaw Blog, 27 March 2024), available at https://pilawblog.com/2024/03/27/ex-turpi-defence-fails-where-claimant-acquitted-for-insanity-lewis-ranwell-v-g4s-in-the-court-of-appeal/.

19 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [125].

20 Ibid, at [125].

21 In addition to nn 8–10, see Traylor, above n 15, Khan v Hussain [2019] CSOH 11, Palmer v Tees Health Authority [2000] PIQR P1 (together with other UK and Commonwealth cases) were discussed.

22 [2016] UKSC 42, [2017] AC 467, at [101], [107], [120].

23 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [151].

24 Ibid, at [134], [141].

25 Ibid, at [145].

26 Gray, above n 10, at [41].

27 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [141].

28 Ibid, at [146]–[148].

29 Ibid, at [156].

30 Ibid, at [157].

31 Ibid, at [162]–[163].

32 Ibid, at [74], [151(3)]. Contrast Underhill LJ: Lewis-Ranwell CA, above n 6, at [114].

33 [1994] 1 AC 340.

34 Tinsley v Milligan [1993] UKHL 3, [1994] 1 AC 340, at 369.

35 Ibid, at 360G–H, 361F–G.

36 Henderson, above n 3, at [58], [119].

37 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [141], [151]; Henderson, above n 3, at [58], [119]; Patel, above n 37, at [101], [107], [120].

38 [2017] AC 467, at [101], [107], [120].

39 J Raz Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) pp 147–148, 171; J Raz ‘Legal validity’ in J Raz The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) pp 154–157. Others make similar arguments (eg J Gardner ‘How law claims, what law claims’ in his Law as a Leap of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) pp 123, 132–134) but these cannot be explored within a case note.

40 Gardner, ibid, p 131.

41 Raz (1999), above n 38, pp 178–179; also J Raz ‘Authority, law, and morality’ in J Raz Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) pp 212–216.

42 Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [134], [141].

43 Ibid, at [141].

44 Henderson, above n 3, at [58] and Gray, above n 10, at [77] citing State Rail Authority of New South Wales v Wiegold (1991) 25 NSWLR 500, at 514.

45 Underhill LJ did not find legal philosophy useful (Lewis-Ranwell CA, above n 6, at [19]–[20]); it received one paragraph in the Supreme Court: Lewis-Ranwell, above n 1, at [130].

46 Tinsley, above n 34, at 369

47 R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38, at [207].

48 Ibid, at [232].