The defendants had agreed to the return of defective spheres of solder which they had manufactured for the plaintiffs. By mistake, as well as returning the defective solder in one box, the plaintiffs returned twenty-one boxes of capacitors which were as the judge said ‘finished goods which could not, by any stretch of imagination, be said to look remotely like solder spheres’. The defendants set about scrapping the capacitors in the mistaken belief that they were their own property and mixed them with the rejected solder spheres so that it became uneconomic to retrieve them.
Held: The defendants were liable as unconscious bailees whose duty before dealing with the goods was to ‘use what is in all the circumstances of the case a sufficient standard of care to ascertain that they truly’ were their own goods.
Judges:
Staughton J
Citations:
Unreported 1 July 1982, Times 07-Jul-1982
Statutes:
Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Distinguished – Regina (Coleman) v Governor of Wayland Prison QBD 3-Apr-2009
The prisoner complained that his mobile phone having been confiscated, the governor had sought its destruction.
Held: It was not open to the governor to destroy the prisoner’s property. The decision in Duggan made the governor’s interpretation . .
Cited – Robot Arenas Ltd and Another v Waterfield and Another QBD 8-Feb-2010
The tenant company had defaulted under the lease, and the landlord had retaken possession. The landlord discarded the tenant’s possessions, and the tenant now sued, saying that the landlords as involuntary bailees owed duties to the proper owner. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Torts – Other
Updated: 06 August 2022; Ref: scu.182767
