The Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875, s. 6, enacts that no person shall sell to the prejudice of the purchaser any article of food or any drug which is not of the nature, substance, and quality of the article demanded by such purchaser, under a penalty not exceeding 201. Held, that a joint stock company incorporated under the Companies Acts can be convicted of an offence under s. 6. Held, also, that a sale may be to the prejudice of the purchaser within s. 6, although the purchaser had special knowledge, not derived from information given by the seller, that the article sold was not of the nature, substance, and quality demanded by him. The test is whether the sale would have been to the prejudice of a purchaser who had not that special knowledge.
Channell J said: ‘ . . the Legislature has thought it so important to prevent the particular act from being committed that it absolutely forbids it to be done; and if it is done the offender is liable to a penalty whether he had any mens rea or not, and whether or not he intended to commit a breach of the law.’
Channell J
[1902] 2 KB 1, [1902] UKLawRpKQB 66, (1902) 87 LT 51, (1902) 20 Cox CC 279, (1902) 71 LJKB 656
Commonlii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Sweet v Parsley HL 23-Jan-1969
Mens Rea essential element of statutory Offence
The appellant had been convicted under the Act 1965 of having been concerned in the management of premises used for smoking cannabis. This was a farmhouse which she visited infrequently. The prosecutor had conceded that she was unaware that the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 07 September 2021; Ref: scu.653247
