A2 Law - Theft

Aight, let's do some theft work. That's right, we're moving away from physics for a post in order to do law. Not as exciting as physics you say? Well, that's true. But it's still some substantial stuff! So stick on Rock of Ages by Def Leppard and let's do this thing.


Ok, starters a definition. Theft is the:

"Dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it."

S.1 (1) The Theft Act 1968

Christ that was a mouthful, one that essentially boils down to what most of us understand to be "nicking something". The academic might also add "for keepsies". Unfortunately the long thing is what you have to memorise, so let's see what we can do about helping that along.

For starters, lets sort out what this is all about, Appropriation:

"Any assumption by a person of the rights of the owner amounts to appropriation."

 S.3 (1) Theft Act

Lots of words that basically mean a person doing something that suggests that they have the right to do that something. Obviously this includes stealing, subject matter and all, but it could also be breaking, selling, eating, anything that the owner has a right to do but you do not. You want an example? I'll give you two. Pitham and Hehl 1977, in which a dude made arrangements to sell some furniture that just wasn't his, and Morris 1973 where another guy swapped the price tags on two items in a shop, thus assuming the rights of the owner.

What the act does not cover is the issue of consent. It could be assumed that appropriation only occurs when there is no consent, but check this case out. Lawrence v MPC 1972. An Italian student was over here, and he took a taxi to some place. He offered £1 to the driver (I guess a relative lot back then), but the driver claimed it was not enough. It was in fact only 50p. The student subsequently offered his wallet to the unscrupulous driver, who took a further £6, a cheap fare now, but again, back then that is pretty horrible. Note that the student offered the wallet and thus the money, thus giving consent. The House of Lords called bullshit (I'm paraphrasing) and that:

"An accused could be said to appropriate even if he has the consent of the owner."

This has been ignored in some cases. See Eddy v Niman 1981 in which some likely lads put stuff in a trolley with the intent to steal. One of them however lost his nerve, but was arrested. He claimed that he had not actually appropriated anything, as he had the implied consent of the shop to put the goods in the trolley. That is how shops tend to work, after all. The QBD agreed. Using this and Morris (previously mentioned) Lord Roskill said that there could be no appropriation without "adverse interference" with the rights of the owner.

Still now we have two different rulings, one saying consent is a defence and another saying it is not. What ever would the courts do? Well, they looked to Gomez 1993. In shorts, dude told his manager that he could totally vouch for his friend's personal cheque. Turns out the cheque was actually stolen though. Shitsux. Gomez tried to get out of trouble by saying that the manager had consented. Naturally the House of Lords called BS on that, siding with the law as put in Lawrence with the poor Italian guy.

But no, they had more questions. Jesus fucking Christ. Did the ruling in Gomez apply where there was no deception? For this we have Gallasso 1993 and  Mazo 1996, in which a carer and a maid respectively persuaded their sick and elderly charges to transfer their savings into their bank accounts.The Court of Appeal said that it was only appropriated if there was deception or force.

And then we have Hinks 2000. Long story short, a not to bright guy inherited a chunk of money. He was then befriended by some malicious harpy who persuaded him to transfer £60,000 into her account. She was convicted, but appealed. Thankfully the Lords smacked her appeal back down. It is worth noting that Lord Steyn said that the matter of deception of pressurisation did not relate to appropriation.

So I just covered 4 cases in which NOTHING WAS EVER CONFIRMED AND IN FACT ONLY MUDDIED UP MATTERS EVEN MORE. Ugh.

Aight. Next definition. Property:

"Property includes money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property."

You see that? They defined property as being property. They defined something with itself. THIS is what I have to deal with.

Sorry. Trying to stay professional. *ahem* So this includes:

1. Money
2. Real property - Land and buildings

• S.4(1) says that this stuff can be stolen but (for fucks sake) this is misleading because S.4(2) says they can only be stolen:
•  By a trustee abusing his powers - selling a building that he is holding for a person to young to technically own it.
• By severing things that form part of the land - uprooting trees and shrubbery, taking down bricks and such like
• By a tenant who removes his landlord's fixtures and fittings - Kinda self explanatory, that one.

     3. Personal Property - Stuff that is movable. Could be a paper plane, could be an actual plane. Includes pets and farm animals.

Dead body parts are not generally regarded as property, but if they have been messed around with, say, preserved, or altered or adapted, then it's a whole other kettle of fish. Kelly and Lindsey 1998, you know I didn't actually think people still robbed graves, but there you go. Ok, it wasn't technically that. A sculptor encouraged a lab assistant at the Royal College of surgeons to nick some body parts. As the parts were preserved, they were property, and the two were convicted of theft.

     4.Things an Action - This is stuff that don't have physical existence. For example, shares in a company, or credit in a bank. I suppose this would also cover your WoW account as well.

     5. Other intangible property - Like stored gas and air.

Things that CANNOT be stolen:

1. Land - Except as specified above
2. Electricity - A different act covers this
3. Information - Oxford v Moss A student "acquired" a draft of his exam questions, copied them, then left the paper where it could be found. Since the paper was findable, there was no intention to permanently deprive the paper, he was charged with theft of information. This kinda didn't work though. So, yeah.
4. Wild creatures - Ok, really? Did this come into question? They're wild. It's implied in the word that they have no owner.
5. Things picked from wild plants - See above. Oh but wait. If you see those berries you just picked, then it becomes property. But you can make jam from it for yourself. That's totally cool.

 Ok, now we're defining Belonging to anotherS.5.

"Property shall be regarded as belonging to any person having possession or control of it, or having proprietary right or interest."

 A rather long way to say that if you own something you own it. Of course it is not as simple as that. That is a fairly wide definition, so let's get into the minutiae.


The property can belong to someone who is not the owner. So if you hire something and it is stolen from you, that something is regarded as having been stolen from you as well as it's actual owner.

An owner can steal his own property from someone else who has a greater right to possess it. Turner 1971, A guy stole his own car from a garage that was working on it to avoid paying he was convicted of stealing his own car, which is pretty embarrassing. Let us take a moment to laugh at that guy.


Property given to you by mistake still belongs to another. This is one to catch you crafty people who might be being paid more that you should be, but not politely informing your employer of this. Attorney General Ref No. 1 1983. See also Shadorokh v Cigari 1988, where a bank error made it so that the accused's account had 286,000 rather than 28,600. Dude spent a chunk of the money and was subsequently picked up for appropriating the property of another.

Property given to you for a specific purpose still belongs to another.  Davidge v Bunnet 1984 Contrary to many MANY not very funny two-guys-on-a-couch style webcomics, it actually isn't ok to take your flat's collective rent and spend it on video games. In this case a girl, in a remarkable act of sheer stupidity took the money and spent it on Christmas presents. Wain 1996 a dude took the money collected for the Telethon charity and kept it. Stuck it in his bank account. Seriously, do these people even think about what they are doing?


If there is not obligation to deal with the property in a specified way then the property does not belong to another. So tough luck if your travel agent goes bankrupt after taking your money, like in Hall 1973.

Lost property belongs to another contrary to popular unwritten law of the land "Finders keepers".


Abandoned property does not belong to another, so good news urban explorers. Don't be stealing stuff from dumpsters though. That could be...well, stealing.

Ok, time for a music break. Let's go for...ah, a song about an old timey outdated and thoroughly disagreeable law.



Next! Dishonesty. You know what that is, yeah? If you say no then you are either being dishonest, or you're not really at the academic level to be reading this blog. Don't let the Pokemon content fool you, this is some hardcore shit.

Pokemon: Serious business

Anyway, this is Section 2 of the surprisingly conveniently named Theft Act. Inconveniently, it does not define it. It defines what isn't it. It anti-defines it, I suppose.

1. Believing you have the legal right to appropriate.
2. Believing that the owner would consent, had he known the circumstances
3. Believing that the owner of lost property cannot be found by taking reasonable steps.

 I reaffirm, the above things are totally ok. You're not going to be in trouble for, say, taking money from the till of your employer in order to buy a bandage for your cut hand, or picking up a tenner from the beach. See also Small 1988 where it was stated that if the accused really believed that a car had been abandoned, that he was not being dishonest.

Sadly there isn't much more in the way of help. Luckily there are however cases to help. Oh goody.

Feely 1973 in which a dude took some money from his employer's till, leaving an IOU.Because of this he claimed he was not being dishonest. The court of appeal said that "dishonest was an ordinary word" and to direct the jury to use their own standards of "common decency" which is a legal way of saying that the Court of Appeal really just couldn't be fucked.

Ok, I'm probably being cynical, however this left juries with a lot of discretion, and subsequently we now have a lot of inconsistencies.

But, oh gosh,  it's Ghosh 1983 where a consultant took money for an operation that had not been carried out. He claimed that since he was already owed the money for other work, this was A OK. However Lord Lane set out these two questions that would subsequently  be known as the Ghosh Test:

Was the accused's behaviour dishonest by the standards of reasonable and honest people?

and

Did the accused realise that reasonable and honest people would regard the act as dishonest?

 Lord Lane also noted that modern day Robin Hoods would not be the much-sung heroes of their namesake. No, they would have to convince the jury that what they did was honest. Similarly those bastards who released the rage virus unto an unsuspecting Britain would have to do the same, before the jury ate their faces.

"Guilty!"

Ok, almost there. The final point, if you can remember all the way back then, is the Intention to Permanently Deprive. Funny thing. The prosecution don't even have to prove that there was a permanent deprivation. Only the intent is required.

Without IPD, the accused has merely "borrowed without permission" which sounds a lot like one of the get out clauses small kids use to avoid getting into trouble for...well, theft. There are, of course, exceptions.

1. Where the intention is "to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of rights." - Marshall 1998. The defendants collected day pass tickets from passengers exiting underground stations. They then sold them to those entering the station. They claimed that there was no IPD as the tickets would eventually return to the ticket collected. This of course, was taking the Michael.
2. Where the intention was to "borrow" it (without permissions) "for a period or in circumstances making it to outright taking or disposal. - This is clearly to cover those who would try and get off on a technicality. "I wasn't technically permanently depriving it. He would have gotten it back within the decade."
3. Intending to return it but only after it's value or usefulness has declined. - Again, to catch the tricky bastards who want something for nothing. For example, if a guy took a movie ticket, and gave it back after it  had been used, or even if the movie had finished, I suppose, not necessarily watched.
4. Intending to sell the stolen property back to it's unsuspecting owner.
5. Intending to return it but being unable to guarantee it because you have given it to a third party - Ok, some of this is starting to sound like some seriously immature stuff. What kind of pissant of a person gives something that is not theirs to someone else without the owner's permission?
6. Intending to return it but only if the owner meets your conditions - Ok, yeah, we are definitely in young child territory now. I say here, if you steal something and try to use these as excuses you are pretty much a bully. A small child bully who never grew up beyond Year 9.

Note that borrowing money without permission nearly always amounts to IPD, as the same matter that was take is unlikely to be returned. It's fairly cosmetic but there you go. See Velmuyl 1989, who, aside from furthering the cause of making it damn near impossible to memorise case names, also took £1000 from an office safe.

Final note on IPD in regards to Conditional Intent. This is where the accused only intends to deprive if he finds something worth stealing. What, and this is ok? Pissing hell, really? Apparently so. Easom 1971, some wanker of an accused rifled through some poor woman's bag, and didn't find anything worth stealing. Subsequently he did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.

Ok, it's the final leg, guys. We just need to do some criticisms, and ones that are more fully formed than my sporadic ramblings and complaints. First up is Appropriation again.

1. We appropriate every day - This is based on the whole shopping thing. We take items that we do not technically own, but really it's all cool because there are all the other things to prove for theft that we just don't cover.
2. Creates an overlap between theft and deception - This is more or less what i was saying before about there being no clear law on when something is appropriation when it does or doesn't involve deception. Blame Gomez.
3. Contradicts the law on the passing of ownership - Civil law says that once you freely hand something over to someone else, it is theirs. Hinks suggests otherwise.

 Next! Criticisms of the Ghosh Test

1. The subjective test may hinder the conviction of the unthinking or fanatical
2. The objective test is too dependent on the individual values of the jurors and leads to inconsistent verdicts - Well exactly. There is nothing clear to follow, so we are left with a bunch of spaghetti law. Then you get the people who are aware of the law but won't convict because they like the look of the defendant, or were convinced by him bursting into repentant tears, and decide to ignore the already muddy law.
3. The Ghosh test is too complex for juries - ...Really? I mean it's two relatively simple questions. Then again, gauging the intelligence of the people I work (job, not college) with, and reminding myself that these are the general public...Ok, fine. It's too complex. And that is sad.

And finally. The Criticisms of the Intention to Permanently Deprive

1. The Lloyd ruling is unsatisfactory - It is illogical that someone returning a half expired or partially broken drill bit might escape conviction.
2. The Easom ruling seems to defy common sense (implying that is at all uncommon in British law dohohohoho). People with conditional intent can escape conviction with nary a slap on the wrist.
3.  Why do we even need IPD? - Is not someone taking something dishonestly enough? Why does it have to be a permanent deprivation? Were it not required, Lloyd and Easom would be convicted and it would all just generally be a lot easier.

And that's it. I am slowly coming to the realisation that law makes me sad. I'm sure it would be easier to deal with, however I also have maths and physics to handle. No, no doss subjects for me. Still, I'll plough through, don't you worry. My only concern is that one or all of my subjects will suffer because I stuck with what initially promised to be such an interesting subject. We shall see, we shall see...Anyway. See you next time.