The Supreme Court of Canada will soon hear a case about an arrest for “possession of a pie with unlawful intent”. Surreally, the pie didn’t even exist but the case has now become one of major constitutional importance in Canada.

The story started in 2002 when police said they believed that someone in Vancouver was going to throw a pie at Jean Chrétien, the Canadian Prime Minister. A judge later described the evidence for the plot as nothing more than “a third hand rumour”. Nonetheless, the police swung into action.

The pie suspect was described by a radio dispatcher as 5 foot 9, with short dark hair and aged 30-35. The police then arrested Cameron Ward – who is 6 foot with collar-length silver hair and who was almost 45 at the time of the incident. Although Ward was clearly pieless when stopped, acting on a suspicion that he might be “hiding pies”, officers whisked him to jail where he was stripped and given a thorough personal search. No pies.

He was then locked in a tiny cell for four-and-a-half hours. Saying that they believed a pie might be hidden in Ward’s car, officers didn’t open the trunk but rather impounded his vehicle. A prominent lawyer often involved in litigating cases of alleged police misconduct, this was not Ward’s first experience of unusual police conduct.

One city officer continued to search for pie evidence for an astonishing six weeks after Ward’s arrest, but none was found. Ward sued the police, the city and the provincial government for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and negligence. He offered to settle the case in return for an apology but his offer was rejected.

In court, a police officer who was asked whether she had found any evidence that Ward was guilty replied, bizarrely, “I did not come across any evidence that he was not”. Ward won the case although the judgment swung on violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, not on specifically illegal police conduct. He was awarded $10,000 damages and the appeal court upheld the award.

The Supreme Court of Canada will now consider in what circumstances damages should be awarded to a citizen whose constitutional rights have been infringed — for instance, being kept in a cell too long — but where the authorities haven’t broken any particular law, a point definitely not as easy as pie.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at the Open University. His book How the Law Works is published by HarperCollins

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