Chapter 12Criminal liability in businessHowever, in this connection the decision of the House
of Lords in Rv Hinks(2000) should be noted. There the
defendant persuaded a man of limited intelligence to
withdraw and give to her the sum of £60,000 from his
savings over a period of eight months. The House of
Lords agreed that she could be successfully charged with
theft. There was an appropriation although the transfer
was in the nature of a gift. Thus, a gift can amount to an
appropriation if the jury decides, as here, that the recipi-
ent acted dishonestly in accepting it.
A further development occurred in Rv Gomez(1993)
where the House of Lords decided that a person could
be guilty of theft by dishonestly appropriating goods
belonging to another if the owner of the goods was
induced by fraud, deception or a false representation to
consent to or authorise the taking of the goods.
complete the purchase of another house for the uncle
and aunt and to transfer the balance of the purchase
price into the bank account of the uncle and aunt.
However, the defendant arranged for the new property
to be registered in the name of herself and her uncle and
not her uncle and aunt. Had she stolen her share in the
new property? No, said the Court of Appeal. She had not
appropriated her share of the £49,950 because it had
been transferred to purchase the property by the consent
of the victims, though obviously they were under a mis-
apprehension as to who was to take the title.
The Court of Appeal said that obtaining by deception
could have been charged, but the prosecution had stuck
to a charge of theft throughout and no substitution of
deception for theft would be made. The conviction of
theft was quashed.
Property
There must be a theft of property. Section 4 defines
property as including real and personal property, money
and intangible property, e.g. a credit balance in a bank
account or a software program. In general terms, and in
spite of the inclusion in the definition of real property,
a person cannot steal land or anything forming part
of land, i.e. fixtures rather than fittings (see further,
Chapter 15 ). However, things which can be severed
from the land can be stolen so that a farmer who with-
out authorisation grazes his cattle on another’s land
steals the grass which has been severed from the land.
Wild plants, flowers and mushrooms can only be stolen
if for commercial gain. Thus, picking mushrooms to sell
in a local market would be theft if the owner of the land
had not given permission. Wild animals cannot be
stolen unless kept in captivity.
Belonging to another
Although the definition of theft states that the property
must belong to another, a person can steal his own
property from someone with an interest in it short of
ownership as the following case illustrates.369
Rv Gomez (1993)Gomez, in order to assist a friend to dispose of stolen
cheques which were undated and bore no payee’s name,
persuaded his boss, the manager of an electrical goods
shop, to accept them for a quantity of goods which the
manager authorised for delivery to the friend. The friend
and Gomez were charged with theft. Gomez appealed
on the issue of appropriation, their Lordships finding him
guilty because there had been an appropriation.
Comment. The House of Lords followed one of its earlier
cases, LawrencevMetropolitan Police Commissioner
(1971), where a tourist gave his wallet full of unfamiliar
English money to a taxi driver so that the latter could take
his fare. The driver ‘appropriated’ much more than was
due and his act was regarded as an appropriation for the
purposes of theft, even though the wallet and its con-
tents had been handed over freely.The line of cases cited above shows the ability of the
court to distinguish cases on the facts, which is particu-
larly common in the criminal law where the liberty of
the subject is at stake. The degree of dishonesty in Eddy
is clearly much less than in the other two cases.
It is worth noting, however, that where the victim
makes the transfer on the basis of some deception by the
defendant, a safer charge is obtaining by deception
rather than theft. For example, in Rv Briggs(2003) the
defendant arranged the sale of the house of her elderly
uncle and aunt. The uncle and aunt authorised the solic-
itors to transfer £49,950 to another firm of solicitors to
Rv Turner(1971)The defendant left his car at a garage for repair. After the
repairs were completed he removed the car from where
it was parked with the intention of not paying for the
repairs. The court held he was guilty of theft. For the pur-
poses of the 1968 Act, the car belonged to the repairer
when it was taken since the garage had control of it.