NON-FRAUDULENT PROPERTY OFFENCES Flashcards
What are Non- Fraudulent Property Offences?
Appropriation of property belonging to another, dishonestly and with the intention of permanently depriving.
What are the elements of Actus Reus according to theft?
Property
Appropriation
Belong to another
What is the meaning of ‘Property’ under S.4 of the Theft Act 1968?
‘Property includes money and all other property, real or personal including things in action and other intangible property.’
What does Intangible property mean ?
Property that does not exist in a physical sense, and a ‘thing in action’ is a technical term to describe property that does not physically exist but which gives the owner legal rights that are enforceable by court action.
What is the case R v Kohn (1979)?
The balance of the account is reduced when the cheque is cashed and can be treated as a thing in action if the cheque was drawn on an account which was in credit or within an agreed overdraft facility.
What is the case R v Duru (1973)?
The case suggested that the piece of paper which the cheque was written could be treated as the property.
What is the case Oxford v Moss (1978)?
Information cannot be stolen.
A student stole an exam paper and was not liable for theft of the information contained in it though he could have been liable for theft of the piece of paper itself assuming all other elements of the offence were present.
What is Section 4 (2) of the Theft Act 1978?
Property does not normally include land however there are some circumstances where land can be stolen:
(a) where the defendant is in certain positions of trust and ‘appropriates the land or anything forming part of it by dealing with it in breach of the confidence reposed in him or her’
(b) when the defendant is not in possession of the land and appropriates anything forming part of the land by severing it or causing it to be severed or after it has been severed.
(c) when a defendant in possession of land under a tenancy appropriates the whole or part of any fixture or structure.
What is Section 4 (4) of the Theft Act 1978?
Wild animals cannot be stolen unless they have been tamed.
What is Section 3 (1) of the Theft Act 1978?
The section defined appropriation: ‘Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation and this includes, where he has come by the property (innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a right to it by keeping or dealing with it as owner’.
