Theft

Question	Answer
Oxford v Moss	Confidential information is not intangible property
R v Kelly	A corpse or body can be property if reduced into another's possession or control or if special skills have been exercised in relation to it
R v Gilks	The manager of the betting shop mistakenly believed the Appellant had won the bet and paid out £106.63. The Appellant knew that the manager was mistaken but accepted the money. He was convicted of theft His conviction was upheld because there was no need to invoke s.5(4) of the Theft Act 1968 since the property in the £106.63 never passed to the Appellant and therefore the property belonged to another. However, if s.5 (4) had applied, a moral obligation would not be sufficient to constitute criminal liability.
Broom v Crowther	one can appropriate by omission
AG ref no 1 of 1983	D, a policewoman, received an overpayment of her salary, which the MPD paid by direct transfer to her bank account. Held: D received property by another’s mistake. By s 5(4) Theft Act 1968 she was not under an obligation to make restoration of the property because the property here was a chose in action, which was not capable of being restored. She was obliged to restore the value of the chose in action, providing the transfer of funds was made under a fundamental mistake. Not guilty but would be now
R v Lloyd	D a projectionist at a cinema secretly borrowed films and lent them to friends who made illegal copies of them. The films were returned after a few hours undamaged to the cinema in time for the performance. Held: Borrowing property could only amount to "intending to permanently deprive the owner of it" if the intention of the borrower was to return the property in such a changed state that it had lost all its practical value. The cinema could still show the films to the public. Not guilty
R v Adams	The person who buys property in good faith does not commit theft when he subsequently learns that he is not the owner.
Anderton v Wish	Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounted to appropriation. In changing the price tags the defendant had assumed the rights of an owner and the operation was therefore an appropriation.
Boggeln v Williams	D failed to pay a bill and was disconnected. D told an employee of the Electricity Board that he intended to reconnect the supply - he did this through the meter so it they would know how much electricity he used. He was charged with abstracting electricity (Sec 13 TA 1968) Held: D's belief in his own honesty was crucial. Sec 13 did not make taking of electricity without due authority dishonest.
R v Briggs	[Theft - appropriation - does not include obtaining by deception] D deceived elderly relatives into making a payment to her during their house move, whereby she (and her father) obtained title to the new property. Held: D did not appropriate an item if by fraud she induced the owner to part with that item. R v Naviede [1997] was relied on. If this were not the case there would be little need for many of the deception offences as many acts of deceptive conduct would be covered by theft, and the word "appropriation" connoted a physical act rather than a more remote action triggering the payment which gave rise to the charge.
R v Easom	D in a cinema picked up a handbag and sorted through the contents. He left the handbag with its contents intact in front of the seat which he had vacated. The handbag had been attached by cotton to a police sergeant's wrist. Held: If D merely had it in mind to deprive the owner of such of his property as, proved worth taking but actually took nothing, he would not have stolen it.
Eddy v Niman	D placed items in a supermarket trolley intending to steal goods. He changed his mind about stealing them before he reached the checkout. He abandoned the goods in the trolley and left the shop. Held: The question to be asked about appropriation was: had the defendant done some overt act inconsistent with the true owner’s rights? D had merely taken goods from the shelf and placed them in a trolley provided by the store. He had not done any overt act inconsistent with the rights of the owner.
R v Feely	D a betting shop manager borrowed £30 from the till and later gave an ‘IOU’. D’s employer had issued a memo stating that borrowing from tills was to stop, D knew this. His employers owed more than twice this sum. Held: ‘Dishonesty’ can only relate to D’s own state of mind and it is a question of fact which juries should decide, applying the standards of ordinary decent people. The word ‘dishonestly’ was an ordinary word of the English language and a jury required no direction by the judge as to its meaning. Not guilty
DPP v Lavender	D took two doors from a council house and used them to replace damaged doors in his girlfriend's house, owned by the same council.Held: Under the first limb of s.6(1) D had treated the doors as his own to dispose of regardless of the owner's rights, and that was enough.The proper question was whether L intended to treat the doors as his own, regardless of the council's rights.
R v Mitchell	As there was no attempt to steal the car, there was no appropriation
Williams v Phillips	DD Dustmen were convicted of stealing goods from dustbins collected in the course of their duties, and selling the goods to dealers and sharing the proceeds. Held: Refuse put in a dustbin was not abandoned; it was the householders' property until it was taken away, when it became the corporation's property; the men knew that they were not allowed to take anything from the refuse and there was abundant evidence on which the justices could convict; therefore, the appeals must be dismissed Guilty
R v Turner	D capable of stealing his own car since the car belonged to another because the garage took control of it
R v Meredith	D went to the yard removed krooklock from the car and drove it away. the police had no right against the owner to retain the car so it was not theft.
DPP v SJ	snapped headphones. practical usefulness gone. enough to be IPD.
Hibbert v McKiernan	golf balls abandoned by owners but still owned by the golf club
R v Hall	D, a travel agent, received money from clients for air trips to America. None of the flights materialised and none of the money was refunded. Held: Although D had a contractual obligation to the clients and could be sued in respect of any breach, he could not be guilty of theft because the clients had not made any special arrangement with D putting him 'under an obligation to retain and deal with... in a particular way' within s 5 (3) (Where a person receives property from or on account of another, and is under an obligation to the other to retain and deal with that property or its proceeds in a particular way, the property or proceeds shall be regarded (as against him) as belonging to the other). Not guilty
Davidge v Burnett	D collected money from fellow lodgers to pay gas bill. spent money on christmas presnets. held should have used these cheques to pay the bills so s 5(3) did apply.
R v Gomwz	D an assistant at an electrical shop was asked by B to supply goods (£16,000) in exchange for two building society cheques that D knew were stolen. D obtained authority from the manager to supply the goods. D did not tell the manager the cheques were stolen and he had not checked with the bank as he was instructed to do. Held: There was an appropriation even though he acted with the authority of the shop manager. Lawrence was the appropriate authority on the issue of appropriation. The consent of the owner was irrelevant in deciding whether an appropriation had taken place. Lord Keith: "...the concept of appropriation in my view involves...an act by way of adverse interference with or usurpation of those rights....The actual decision in Morris was correct, but it was (wrong) to indicate that an act expressly or impliedly authorised by the owner could never amount to an appropriation." Guilty
R v Marshall	DDD obtained London Underground tickets from passengers leaving the system and sold them to other potential customers. Held: On issuing an Underground ticket a contract was created between London Underground and the purchaser, under which both parties had rights and obligations which could be enforced. Each party to the contract had obtained a chose in action, represented on the purchaser’s side by the right to travel on the Underground and on London Underground’s side by the right to insist that the ticket was used by no-one other than the purchaser. It was this right that was disregarded when the appellants acquired the tickets and sold them on. The charge of theft related to the tickets themselves, which were not choses in action. The fact that the tickets might return to the possession of London Underground was irrelevant. The Theft Act 1968 s 6(1) applied. The appellants had admitted dishonesty. Guilty
R v Lawrence	D a taxi driver in London took an Italian tourist who spoke little English to a destination where the tourist offered D £1 but D took a further £6 from the tourist’s wallet. The fare should have been 10s 6d (52 1/2p). D argued that the tourist had consented to the taking of the money from the wallet by holding it open and so D could not have appropriated it. Held: Viscount Dilhorne: It was not necessary to establish that the appropriation had taken place without the owner’s consent. Belief or absence of belief that the owner consented to the appropriation may be relevant to the issue of dishonesty but not to the issue of appropriation. Guilty of theft of £6
R v Hinks	D a carer of a 53-year-old man of low intelligence persuaded him to make gifts to her totalling £60,000 (almost all his savings). Held: Lord Steyn: It was held in R v Lawrence (1972) and DPP v Gomez (1993) that it was immaterial whether the act of appropriation was done with or without the owner's consent or authority. "Appropriation" is a neutral word comprehending "any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner". A person could appropriate property belonging to another where the other person made him an indefeasible gift of property, retaining no proprietary interest or any right to resume or recover any proprietary interest in the property. D had acted dishonestly. Guilty
Broom v Crowther	Once he found doubts over its origins, he did not touch it. conviction quashed on teh basis that he had not appropriated it since discovery that it was stolen. he was not keeping as owner
R v Ghosh	omeone else had carried out the operations under the NHS. Held: In determining whether D was acting dishonestly, the jury had first to consider whether according to the standards of the ordinary reasonable person what was done was dishonest (the objective test). If it was, the jury must then consider whether D himself must have realised that what he was doing was dishonest by the standards of the ordinary reasonable person (the subjective test). Guilty Comment: This is referred to as the two-fold test. The main criticism of which is that it does not eradicate the potential for inconsistency between juries, who are required to apply the "current standards of ordinary decent people".

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