The defendant appealed against his conviction for a dishonest attempt to avoid payment. He had made regular trips on the London underground, and had purchased two weekly season tickets, one for each end of his journey, but not in respect of the middle part. He now argued that the judge had incorrectly interpreted sub-paragraph (c). He said that subsection (c) dealt with a potential liability, or alternatively, a liability created at the time of the fraud, and does not extend to the type of situation of the case.
Held: The appeal failed: ‘the traveller on the underground is saying, albeit tacitly by waving the season tickets in the air, ‘I am the holder of a ticket which authorises me to be making this journey without further payment. Consequently I am not under any liability to pay any more.’ In the ordinary meaning of the words it seems to us that that is dishonestly obtaining, or attempting to obtain, an exemption from the liability to pay the excess fare which, if he had been honest, he would have had to pay. As we say, the fact that it may also have been an attempt to commit an offence under subsection (b) is neither here nor there. Consequently, upon those grounds, in our judgment, the learned Judge was right not to stop the case, as Mr. Blair-Gould submitted he should have, at the end of the prosecution case, and also in his direction to the jury which it is not necessary for us to read.’
Lord Lane LCJ, McCowan, Nolan JJ
[1983] EWCA Crim 3, [1983] Crim LR 470
Bailii
Theft Act 1978 2(1)(c)
England and Wales
Crime
Leading Case
Updated: 11 November 2021; Ref: scu.247948
