''Lawrence v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis'' (otherwise known as ''R v Lawrence'')

972 Year 972 ( CMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Spring – Emperor John I Tzimiskes divides the Bulgarian territories, recently held by the Kievan Rus', into six ...

AC 262 is an

English criminal law English criminal law concerns offences, their prevention and the consequences, in England and Wales. Criminal conduct is considered to be a wrong against the whole of a community, rather than just the private individuals affected. The state, i ...

case establishing that the appropriation of property — under the meaning of the

Theft Act 1968 The Theft Act 1968 (c. 60) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It creates a number of offences against property in England and Wales. On 15 January 2007 the Fraud Act 2006 came into force, redefining most of the offences of d ...

— can be consented to. The

House of Lords The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...

here ruled that an appropriation of property can occur even with the consent of the owner. To this end, they commented that the drafter's intentions in leaving out consent from the offence was to relieve the prosecution of establishing a lack of consent.

Facts

Upon arrival at

London Victoria railway station Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street, the mai ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

student got into a

taxi A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a Driving, driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of thei ...

driven by the defendant. The student then handed the driver a piece of paper with the destination he wished to go to. The taxi driver informed him that it was a long and expensive journey,

AC 626, at 626 and proceeded to take £6 from the student's open wallet, ostensibly to cover the fare. Unknown to the student, who was not familiar with the area, the correct fare was just 10s 6d. (52.5p)

Judgment

The

upheld the earlier judgment of the

Court of Appeal An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...

, holding that a conviction under section 1 of the

was correct. Four elements are required for an offence to fall under section 1:

A person is guilty of theft if he (1) dishonestly (2) appropriates (3) property (4) belonging to another with the (5) intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and 'thief' and 'steal' shall be construed accordingly.

Viscount Dilhorne interpreted these words as not requiring a lack of consent of the owner, stating that he saw: "no ground for concluding that the omission of the words "without the consent of the owner" was inadvertent and not deliberate," and that Parliament in omitting the words had simply removed the necessity for prosecutions to establish an appropriation was without an owner's consent.

AC 626, at 632 On the issue of whether an appropriation could be consented to, Dilhorne elaborated:

References

{{reflist English criminal case law House of Lords cases 1971 in United Kingdom case law History of the Metropolitan Police

Facts

Judgment

See also

References