Hill v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, (1989)1 AC 191, the plaintiff's 20 year old daughter was attacked at night in a city street of the police area of which the defendant was chief constable and died from her injuries. Her attacker who was convicted of her murder was alleged to have committed series of offences of murder and attempted murder against young women in the area. Action was laid by the appellant-mother claiming damages for the negligence in apprehending the accused and for the faulty investigation. The trial Court quashed the action on the ground of lack of cause of action and in appeal it was confirmed. Lord Keith of Kinkel speaking for the House, had held that "where an individual member of the police force in the course of carrying out their functions of controlling and keeping down the incidence of crime owed a duty of care to individual members of the public who may suffer injury of person or property through the activities of criminals such as to result in liability for damages on the ground of negligence to anyone who suffers such injury by reason of the breach of that duty. Having posed that question, the House held that the general sense of public duty which motivates police forces in unlikely to be appreciably reinforced by the imposition of such liability so far as concerns their function in the investigation and suppression of crime. From time to time they make mistakes in the exercise of that function, but it is not to be doubted that they apply their best endeavors to the performance of it. In some instances the imposition of liability may lead to the exercise of a function being carried on in a detrimentally defensive frame of mind. The possibility of this happening in relation to the investigative operations of the police cannot be excluded. Further it would be reasonable to expect that if potential liability were to be imposed it would be not uncommon for actions to be raised against police forces on the ground that they had failed to catch some criminal as soon as they might have done, with the result that he went on to commit further crimes. While some such actions might involve allegations of a simple and straightforward type of failure - for example that a police officer negligently tripped and fell while pursuing a burglar - others would be likely to enter deeply into the general nature of a police investigation, as indeed the present action would seek to do."