A question arose as to whether the stamps the Post Office lost, which if they had been stolen would have been sold in the thieves’ market, had a ‘market value’ within the meaning of the section.
Held: The buyer, the seller and the market considered may be hypothetical. Lord Denning excluded illegitimate transactions from the determination of market value. Russell LJ excluded the thieves’ market in the lost holiday stamps.
Lord Denning MR said: ‘There was only one seller of these stamps (at any rate in the legitimate market) and that was the plaintiff company. They sold them at their face value. But there were thousands of buyers. And they all paid the face value. The market value was clearly the face value.’ and ‘An action against a bailee can often be put, not as an action in contract or tort, but as an action on its own, sui generis, arising out of the possession had by the bailee of the goods’.
Pearson LJ said: ‘For the purposes of the present case, I think it [the expression ‘market value’] could be sufficiently defined as the uniform or average price or consideration for which the article in question is ordinarily bought and sold or acquired and disposed of in legitimate transactions. In some other case it might be necessary to resort to surreptitious transactions in search of ‘market value’: Mouat v Betts Motors Ltd [1959] AC 71, 82. There is no such necessity in this case, as there is a normal cycle of transactions, in which the ownership of the stamps is transferred and the price or consideration involved is always equal to the face value.’
Judges:
Lord Denning MR and Pearson LJ, Russell LJ
Citations:
[1966] 1 QB 247
Statutes:
Crown Proceedings Act 1947 9(2)(b)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – HM Revenue and Customs, Regina (on the Application of) v Raymond Machell QC and others Admn 21-Nov-2005
The claimant had had goods taken and destroyed by Revenue and Customs, which had been found to be wrongfully condemned. They had been awarded the market value of the goods at UK prices, though they had been bought in France.
Held: The market . .
Cited – Islam, Regina v HL 10-Jun-2009
The defendant appealed against a confiscation order saying that it should not have been set at values which reflected the black market value of the drugs he had imported.
Held: The appeal failed. The court could take account of the illegal . .
Cited – Islam, Regina v HL 10-Jun-2009
The defendant appealed against a confiscation order saying that it should not have been set at values which reflected the black market value of the drugs he had imported.
Held: The appeal failed. The court could take account of the illegal . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Damages
Updated: 10 May 2022; Ref: scu.235498