Recent Judicial Decisions
| Published date | 01 January 1983 |
| Date | 01 January 1983 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X8305600114 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PROFESSOR
SIR
JOHN
WOOD,
CB.E.,
LL.M.,
The University
of
Sheffield,
Legal Correspondent
of
the Police Journal.
RECENT
JUDICIAL
DECISIONS
HONEST
R. v. Ghosh [1982] 3 W.L.R. 110
Court
of Appeal
It
appears that the accused, who held a locum tenens post in a
hospital, had claimed fees for an operation carried out, not on a fee
paying basis but under the National Health Service.
The appeal turned upon the trial Judges' direction on the meaning
of dishonest,
and
led to a wide discussion of
that
concept. The trial
Judge had apparently been short and clear. He had first remarked
with sadness
that
there are "infinite categories of dishonesty". He
went on to leave the decision as to whether the conductwas dishonest
to the jury, indicating that they were to look for conduct such as
getting something for nothing, sharp practices or manipulating
systems.
In delivering the judgment of the
Court
of Appeal, Lord Lane,
CJ,
remarked
that
he found the law in a complicated state. He looked
first at the recent case of R. v. Me Ivor [1982] I W.L.R. 409, where it
appeared
that
an attempt had been made to reconcile the objective
and the subjective approaches. The subjective view can be distilled
from the approach of Lawton, LJ, in R. v.
Landy
[1981] 1 W.L.R.
355. The case concerned aconspiracy to defraud and the prosecution
were said to be under an obligation to establish that the accused
thought he was acting dishonestly. The jury were to test what was
done against their own standard of honesty which might cause them
to disbelieve the accused when he claimed that he did not view his
actions as dishonest. In a simpler case, R. v. Greenstein [1975] 1
W.L.R. 1353, a straight objective test was used at one point. The
charges arose out of stagging,
that
is applying for large numbers of a
new issue of shares in the hope of making a big profit on the margin
i.e. by only committing asmall proportion of the final purchase
price. The jury were simply invited to apply their own standards.
In M
elvor
the Court of Appeal attempted to reconcile these
approaches. These propositions were adopted.
It
was accepted
that
in conspiracy to defraud cases a subjective dishonesty was needed. In
deception cases (s. 15) the accused must have believed in, or been
unconcerned about, the falsity of the basis of the deception. In theft
cases dishonesty is an objective matter, apart from the provisions set
January
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