#crime #law #theft

R v Lloyd [1985] QB 829

FACTS: Lloyd was a projectionist in a cinema. He borrowed films from the cinema, and with others, he copied them onto videotape, sold the videotapes, and then returned the original films to the cinema ready for the next show. Lloyd and his co-accused were convicted of conspiracy to steal (theft). HELD: On appeal, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions. Refusing to hold that their actions were covered by the TA 1968, s 6(1), Lord Lane CJ said:

'In this case we are concerned with the second part of s 6(1), namely the words after the semi-colon: "and a borrowing or a lending of it may amount to so treating if, but only if, the borrowing or lending is for a period and in circumstances making it equivalent to an outright taking or disposal." This half of the subsection ... is intended to make it clear that a mere borrowing is never enough to constitute the necessary guilty mind, unless the intention is to return the "thing" in such a changed state that it can truly be said that all its goodness or virtue has gone: for example: R v Beecham (1891) 5 Cox CC 181, where the defendant stole railway tickets intending that they should be returned to the railway company in the usual way only after the journeys had been completed ... The judge in the present case gave another example, namely the taking of a torch battery with the intention of returning it only when its power is exhausted. The goodness, the virtue, the practical value of the films to the owners has not gone out of the article. The film could still be projected to paying audiences, and, had everything gone according to the conspirators' plans, would have been projected in the ordinary way to audiences at the Odeon Cinema, Barking, who would have paid for their seats. Our view is that those particular films which were the subject of this alleged conspiracy had not themselves diminished in value at all. What had happened was that the borrowed film had been used or was going to be used to perpetrate a copyright swindle on the owners whereby their commercial interests were grossly and adversely affected ...'