Club, not members, prosecutable for breach
The Environment Agency appealed against dismissal of charges against the defendants who were officers in an unincorporated members’ golf club on whose land there had been pollution. The judge had ruled that the unincorporated association could have been prosecuted under the 1978 Act, and that a prosecution would not lie against the defendants in the absence of personal culpability.
Held: The Act made no provision to allow prosecution of unincorporated associations, and no general policy could be derived for construing such provisions, because there were such a wide range of provsions. It was not possible to draw from the absence of provisions a conclusion that unincorporated associations could not be prosecuted. In this case the offence was one of strict liability falling on the owner of the land. In every sense that in practice meant the association. Any penalty would be set by reference to the means not of the two defendants but of the club, and any conviction might have real consequences for a defendant; ‘We conclude that the judge was right in his first decision. The prosecution of the club was permissible in law. The definition of ‘person’ in the Interpretation Act 1978 applied and no contrary intention appeared.’
The judge had decided that section 217 of the 1991 meant that the club’s officers could not be prosecuted. The Act contained no ‘officers’ liability’ provision, but the judge went too far in reading into the Act a provision limiting the liability of officers in an unincorporated association to the equivalent responsibility of those in a company. Unincorporated associations varied too widely. ‘a prosecution for the strict liability offence of causing polluting matter to enter controlled waters may be brought, on the facts of this case, against either the club in its own name, or against individual members. It is for the Crown in any individual case to determine the defendant(s) whom it seeks to prosecute. The court would interfere only in the very limited case of oppression involving abuse of process.’
Hughes LJ said: ‘There are probably almost as many different types of unincorporated association as there are forms of human activity. This particular one was a club with 900 odd members, substantial land, buildings and other assets, and it had no doubt stood as an entity in every sense except the legal for many years. But the legal description ‘unincorporated association’ applies equally to any collection of individuals linked by agreement into a group. Some may be sold and permanent; others may be fleeting, and/or without assets. A village football team, with no constitution and a casual fluctuating membership, meeting on a Saturday morning on a rented pitch, is an unincorporated association, but so are a number of learned societies with large fixed assets and detailed constitutional structures . .’
Judges:
Hughes LJ, David Clarke J,Blair J
Citations:
[2008] EWCA Crim 1970, [2009] 1 All ER 786
Links:
Statutes:
Criminal Justice Act 2003 58, Water Resources Act 1991 217(1), Interpretation Act 1978 5
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Empress Car Company (Abertillery) Ltd v National Rivers Authority HL 22-Jan-1998
A diesel tank was in a yard which drained into a river. It was surrounded by a bund to contain spillage, but that protection was over ridden by an extension pipe from the tank to a drum outside the bund. Someone opened a tap on that pipe so that . .
Cited – Lockwood, Regina v CACD 1-May-2008
. .
Cited – Regina v R CACD 29-Feb-2008
The court considered the application of section 58 to prosecution appeals and the use of the ‘acquittal agreement’. . .
Cited – W Stevenson and Sons (A Partnership) and Another v Regina CACD 25-Feb-2008
The defendant partnership had been convicted of offences of failing to submit sales notes of the results of its fish auctions. Some individual partners sought to appeal.
Held: The statute could make a partnership liable as a separate entity. . .
Cited – Taff Vale Railway Co v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants HL 22-Jul-1901
A trade union, an unincorporated association, could be sued in its own name despite the absence of any statutory provision permitting it. Lord Lindley said that the problem of how to adapt legal proceedings to unincorporated societies consisting of . .
Cited – Regina v Clerk to Croydon Justices ex parte Chief Constable of Kent QBD 1989
A partnership or an unincorporated association could be registered as a fine defaulter if it failed to pay a fixed penalty arising from its ownership of a motor vehicle; that was because the statutory definition of defaulter depended on the use of . .
Cited – Davey v Shawcroft 1948
The court was asked whether an agent of the committee of an unincorporated association, who was personally responsible for a breach of the licence terms, was properly convicted.
Held: Lord Goddard CJ said that section 19 meant that an . .
Cited – Attorney-General v Able and Others QBD 28-Apr-1983
The Attorney General sought a declaration as to whether it would be the crime of aiding and abetting or counselling and procuring suicide, to distribute a booklet published by the respondent which described various effective ways of committing . .
Cited by:
Cited – Boyle, Regina (On the Application of) v Haverhill Pub Watch and Others Admn 8-Oct-2009
The claimant had been banned from public houses under the Haverhill Pub Watch scheme. He now sought judicial review of a decision to extend his ban for a further two years. The Scheme argued that it was not a body amenable to judicial review, and . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime, Company, Environment
Updated: 28 January 2022; Ref: scu.273131
