- This topic has 51 replies, 21 voices, and was last updated 12 years ago by Munqe-chick.
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Strange legality problem, any experts about?
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allthegearnoideaFree Member
Hi all,
I’m in possession of a necklace that it turns out is worth a few pounds, I never bought it, I never stole it, but then I didn’t pay for it either.
A little background…
Many years ago I used to clean cars as part of my job, now I don’t know if you have ever seen a cleaner empty a hoover, but they always do a quick check for any coins etc before emptying it, usually with a stick or long screwdriver, anyway I was emptying out the hoover & came across a necklace, gave a quick clean & took it home & gave it to the wife 😐
Anyway, she didn’t like it & put it in a jewellery box & it was forgotten about, well it was until recently when I found my 12 year old daughter wearing it & took it off her as I didn’t want her wearing it when she was out of the house without us. Now in this modern age where information is readily available on the internet I thought I would see if it was worth anything, it is, about a thousand pounds or so!
So what do I do now? I know I should of done something about it at the time, but I really didn’t think it had any value, it looks like something out of Ratners 😉
Cheers for any replies.
TandemJeremyFree MemberTake it to the police with a report of where and when you found it. if it is not claimed after a while it becomes yours. Explain you forgot until recently you found it. That should get you right legally.
maccruiskeenFull MemberMorally…. punt it on eBay, then remind the Mrs that she turned her nose up at it while you thumb through catalogues of your favorite things.
allthegearnoideaFree MemberThanks for the replies, I can’t say when I got it, far to long ago, but I suppose I could take it to the police & see if it’s been reported as lost, is does have a number (really small, I can just about see it on a 5mp macro image), so I guess whoever lost it would have had that if they reported it.
I feel bad, but at the same time I wouldn’t mind the money 👿
CharlieMungusFree MemberMy 8 year old found £200 quid on the street, even he knew to take it to the police station. Why didn’t you hand it in when you ‘found’ it?
allthegearnoideaFree MemberFor the same reason we never handed coins back, car cleaners don’t make a lot of money you know 😉
Munqe-chickFree Member(Mr MC posting)
at the time of finding it was it reasonable for you to identify the owner? I assume as you cleaned a car the answer’s yes. If so then by the definition of theft you stole it when you gave it to your wife, as that was the point you appropriated it, and in not making reasonable steps to identify the owner and return it to them you acted dishonestly.
Known as “theft by finding” and I have charged people with it. The argument around whether you were dishonest is based around “reasonable” (R v Ghosh case law if you are interested enough to google it), and the text books use the examples of finding a wallet containing cash and ID versus finding a fiver in the street. How many cars had you hoovered before emptying it?
Possibly not the answer you were looking for?
CharlieMungusFree MemberFor the same reason we never handed coins back, car cleaners don’t make a lot of money you know
Right, so that makes it ok to keep someone else’s stuff foes it?
DairFree MemberExplain you forgot until recently you found it. That should get you right legally.
No.
you stole it when you gave it to your wife
Yes
Recommended course of action? Hand it in to police, and deal with the consequences. If, after three months, you get it back, sell it on e-bay and donate the proceeds to charity.
allthegearnoideaFree MemberHere we go, I’ll take a deep breath & try to dig myself out of this hole…
No, nothings going to work is it..
Ps, no idea how many cars had been hoovered but the hoover was only cleaned when it was full.
*Runs off to hide from the
lawSTW massive*thejesmonddingoFull MemberIf anyone other than you used the hoover,and you had no knowledge of when it had last been emptied,then it was almost certainly not reasonable to identify the owner,so DON’T PANIC
allthegearnoideaFree MemberMr MC, read it, it looks like I’m guilty me Lord 😯
R v Ghosh (1982)
This case ([1982] QB 1052) demonstrates some features of
dishonesty' in the definition of theft in the Theft act 1968. Ghosh was convicted of obtaining money by deception, and intention to obtain money by deception. During his work as a locum surgeon he obtained money by claiming fees for work he had not carried out, or had carried out under the provisions of the NHS. His appeal was on the basis that the trial judge had misdirected the jury on the meaning of
dishonesty’. What he (the judge) had said, in fact, was to the effect that the jury members would have to use their common sense to determine whether the accused’s conduct had been dishonest or not. It was not a term that the judge should have to define. On appeal it was argued that the judge should have warned the jury that dishonesty was a state of mind of the accused, and not an objective measure. Before considering the judgement in this case, it is worth reviewing the development of legal thinking on dishonesty in the recent past.In cases where dishonesty is part of the Mens Rea, the authorities have tended to support either a very subjective, or a very objective view. A demonstration of the subjective approach is seen in R v Landy [1981] 1 WLR 355, where the judgement of the Court of Appeal was that the jury should be directed to `look into the mind of the defendant’ to determine whether he was acting honestly or not. There was little discussion here about objective standards of honesty. In effect, so long as the accused believed himself to be acting honestly, whatever other people would think, that was enough to defeat a charge of dishonesty.
On the other hand, in R v Greenstein [1975] 1 WLR 1353, it was specifically stated that the jury should not attempt to use the accused’s own standards of honesty to judge him, else everybody accused of dishonesty, if he were to be tested by his own standards, would be acquitted automatically. Clearly cases like this are in some conflict with cases like Landy.
In R vmc ivor [1982] 1 WLR 409 the Court of Appeal was faced with the unpalatable task of reconciling two lines of reasoning that were fundamentally incompatible. To declare one approach to be superior to the other would have been to allow that, to some extent, a large number of cases had been decided in a suboptimal way in the past. Ingeniously, the ruling they adopted was that the subjective approach — as typified in Landy — is to be preferred to the objective approach — in Greenstein — where the charge is a conspiracy to defraud or to steal, but that the objective approach is preferable in cases of actual fraud or theft.
In this case, the Court of Appeal decided, reluctantly, that the principle in McIvor was neither justifiable in theory, nor workable in practice. Instead they asserted that the difficulties that had arisen in this area resulted from a misunderstanding of the nature of a `subjective’ measure of dishonesty. The state of the accused’s mind is important, but only to the extent that he knew or did not know how his actions would accord with ordinary people.
As a result of this ruling, the position now appears to be as follows. For offences involving fraud, deceit, theft (including attempts and conspiracy), an act is dishonest if
it would be seen as dishonest by an `ordinary decent’ person (i.e., a jury member), and
the accused was aware of this.
It seems, therefore, that there are two defences against a claim of dishonesty. First, it can be claimed that the act was one that would not have been seen as dishonest by an ordinary person. If this can be sustained then the state of mind of the accused is irrelevant. If it can’t, then one can attempt to show that the accused was unaware that his action would be deemed dishonest by other people. The judgement in Ghosh also stated that in the majority of cases it would be obvious that the accsed knew he was acting in a way that would be deemed dishonest.In a sense, this ruling is even more ingenious that that in McIvor, because although McIvor was disapproved, it was done in such a way that it did not undermine any of the reasoning that had led to it. In a sense, Ghosh seems to say that there is no distinction between a subjective and an objective test for dishonesty, if `subjective’ is interpreted in the right way.
Philosophically, however, there has to be some question about a definition of dishonesty in terms of
things ordinary, decent people would deem dishonest'. This is surely circular, like defining an artist as a
person recognized as an artist’.The complexity and extent of the argument on this subject surely result from attempts to define the undefinable. Anyone can give an example of dishonest behaviour, but not everyone could attempt a definition of the word. Even if everyone agreed on the dishonesty in specific cases, in all likelihood they would disagree on the definition. The writers of statutes know this; they can use the word
dishonesty', just as they can use words like
malice’ and `intention’, and leave courts to decide the particulars in each case. Unfortunately, the principle of Stare decisis means that decisions in individual cases have to be reconciled with those in previous cases, which is like asking everyone to agree with a definition of an undefinable term.CharlieMungusFree MemberMr MC, read it, it looks like I’m guilty me Lord
Sell it and give the money to charity
Neither of these is satisfactory. There is a propert amnesty here, send it to me and I will put it in. Worth a £1000 you say?
nickfFree MemberI think Mr MC is correct on the law but incorrect in this case. If you cleaned out the vacuum after every ca, then you’d know exactly which car it came from.
If you cleaned it out every, say, ten cars, then you’d still know that it came from a small pool of cars.
If you only cleaned out the vacuum after every, say, 50 cars then it would be much, much harder to identify.
All of the above assumes the cars are booked in and you log all the registration numbers. If you don’t, and all you can say is “it was a black Mercedes” then as long as you declare it to the police, I fail to see that you’re being in any way dishonest.
allthegearnoideaFree MemberI’m still thinking this over, but just say I had emptied the hoover straight in to the bin? The bloody thing would be gone forever, or someone else finds it with a metal detector on a dump sometime!
Anyway, I think the best thing to do is to hand it in to the police station* & see if I get done for it, I wish I had just emptied the darn hoover now 🙁
* Or stick it back in the draw & forget about it again.
allthegearnoideaFree MemberInteresting nickf, the majority of the cars would have been bought in from various sources & then cleaned to be sold at the premises, I suppose the odd customer car was cleaned, but most would of been owned by the dealer.
FlaperonFull MemberThe issue is not that it would have been lost had you emptied the hoover straight into the bin; the issue is that you found something valuable that you knew not to be yours, and dishonestly kept it instead of handing it to the police.
Hand it over, say you just found it, and can’t remember which car it might have come from.
CharlieMungusFree MemberAnyway, I think the best thing to do is to hand it in to the police station* & see if I get done for it, I wish I had just emptied the darn hoover now
Don’t do that!! You’ll find yourself nicked and wondering why the hell you owned up in the first place!
5thElefantFree MemberYou could bury it under the patio.
That’s what my parents did to the lambretta I found when I was a kid.
Munqe-chickFree Membernickf thats why I asked how many cars he cleaned and how often the cleaner was emptied. All the questions we both asked and points you raise are points that would go to whether it was reasonable and which we dont know about this case. And if it was reasonable then it is theft.
Handing it in might be the “right” thing to do but as it was found years ago its unrealistic to think the original owner will somehow come to get it back.
Heres a scenario that might ease your moral and legal conscience;
1) hand it in to police as found property
2) when it is returned to you as the original owner hasnt claimed it sell it and give all the money to charity.CharlieMungusFree Member^^^
What he said, except the bit about giving the money to charity
mightymarmiteFree MemberJust to back up a little … but if the vehicles belonged to the company
the cars would have been bought in from various sources & then cleaned to be sold at the premises
Then wouldn’t any property contained within / upon the vehicles belong to the company …
ie. Theft as a servant ???
heuer27Free MemberTechnically it’s regarded as theft by finding, in Scotland at least . If you have had it for a period of time and then try to hand it in to the police you will be asked a lot of awkward questions that you might struggle to answer. Best that you just sell it on to a gold merchant/pawn shop and spend the money on your family.
The marks you are referring to are purely there to prove that the item has been through the system and confirmed as gold /silver etc.They confirm the quality, year of manufacture and city where they have been examined and confirmed as precious metal.Munqe-chickFree MemberMightymarmite no such thing as “theft as a servant”, it’s simple theft by finding!! Just hand it in and get it over with after all this time I would hope that you wouldn’t be arrested and you’d get some words of advice instead.
ziggyFree MemberSo were you working for an employer at the time? You could have technically have stolen from your ex employer 😆
Seriously though, some people here need to get off their mighty high horses. If it was me I’d just sell it on anyhow.
allthegearnoideaFree Membermightymarmite – Member
Just to back up a little … but if the vehicles belonged to the companythe cars would have been bought in from various sources & then cleaned to be sold at the premises
Then wouldn’t any property contained within / upon the vehicles belong to the company …ie. Theft as a servant ???
So as a ‘servant’ (nice phrase BTW) I should of been making the best of my time & not rooting through a hoover, so I only get done for their time? I still wish I had emptied the thing straight in the bin..
heuer27 – Member
Technically it’s regarded as theft by finding, in Scotland at least . If you have had it for a period of time and then try to hand it in to the police you will be asked a lot of awkward questions that you might struggle to answer. Best that you just sell it on to a gold merchant/pawn shop and spend the money on your family.
The marks you are referring to are purely there to prove that the item has been through the system and confirmed as gold /silver etc.They confirm the quality, year of manufacture and city where they have been examined and confirmed as precious metal.No, it turns out it’s a Chopard happy diamonds necklace & they are numbered…
mightymarmiteFree MemberApologies Munqe-chick … in Kiwi-land we still have the charge available (and funnily enough … it is widely used !)
Basically if the property belongs to your employer, then then theft comes under this charge. Not sure what the Equivalent Pomme charge would be 🙂
McHamishFree MemberThat looks expensive to me!
Not sure I would claim finders rights on it if I had found it.
This is the only possible conclusion….
My only advice is don’t pick up the soap…
aracerFree MemberBest that you just sell it on to a gold merchant/pawn shop and spend the money on your
familybikeFTFY
TandemJeremyFree MemberNo, it turns out it’s a Chopard happy diamonds necklace & they are numbered…
In that case the original owner should be listed. Try contact the manufacturer
How many years ago?
heuer27Free MemberAh I see. Still, punt it on and IF anyone asks then you bought it in a job lot at a house clearance /car boot sale.
I think you are getting your knickers in a twist about nothing over this. If it has been a few years ,no-one will still be actively looking for the item if they ever were,it was after all lost by the original owner.
Sorry if this isn’t a politically correct way of thinking about the situation but he has had the neckless for years now.
I take it you do realise that you have now broadcast your predicament to the world by posting here ?Jujuuk68Free MemberOdd.
If it was someones prized Orange 5, and someone just happened to “find it”, and not notify anyone, because “iw was a dirty old bike”, they’d be tar warming, chickens being plucked, and pitchforks being sharpened.
Why then is it different being a loved family hairloom of sentimental meaning, a 1 off item handed down the generations is “finders keepers” suddenly ok?
5thElefantFree MemberAlso odd how quite a few people use the term ‘grass’, suggesting they, at best, associate with criminals. But they’re not here offering advice on fencing the dodgy goods.
allthegearnoideaFree MemberRight, it was, according to my wife, before we had kids, that means over 15 years ago, that gets that one out of the way.
Secondly I think the analogy with the bike is ludicrous, please explain your train of thought, it’s akin to saying I robbed a bank because a cashier had left money on the counter & I walked off with it, that would clearly be theft.
Thirdly
heuer27 – Member
I take it you do realise that you have now broadcast your predicament to the world by posting here ?Yes, I’m going to hand it in when I have the time to answer the inevitable questions.
Cheers.
McHamishFree MemberI suppose a better analogy would be for a house cleaner to pick up a pile of old letters/envelopes etc ready for recycling and after going through it finding an envelope stuffed with £2,000 cash – and deciding to keep it.
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