Victoria Sporting Club Ltd v Hannam (on Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Reid,Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest,Lord Pearce,Lord Wilberforce,Lord Diplock |
| Judgment Date | 29 January 1969 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1969] UKHL J0129-4 |
| Date | 29 January 1969 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1969] UKHL J0129-4
House of Lords
Lord Reid
Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest
Lord Pearce
Lord Wilberforce
Lord Diplock
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Victoria Sporting Club Limited against Hannam (on Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division), that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Thursday the 12th as on Monday the 16th, days of December last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Victoria Sporting Club Limited, of 150-162 Edgware Road, London, W.2, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice of the 21st of October 1968, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioners might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; and Counsel having been heard on behalf of Kenneth Hannam, the Respondent in the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, of the 21st day of October 1968, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Appellants do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Respondent the Costs incurred by him in respect of the said Appeal, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
My Lords,
The Appellants were convicted by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on a charge that they were concerned on 15th February 1968 in the organisation and management of unlawful gaming. The charge related both to roulette and to dice, but the argument before your Lordships was confined to the playing of roulette. I think it clear that the "game" of roulette is a game played between one player and the bank, each player at the table playing a separate game with the bank. It appears that roulette has generally been played so that, if the player puts a stake on a single number and that number wins, he only wins 35 times his stake. But playing at odds of 35 to 1 favours the bank by reason of the presence of a zero as well as 36 numbers. It is necessary to play at odds of 36 to 1 if the chances are to be equally favourable to the player and to the bank. The first question in this appeal is whether on the occasion in question all the players were playing at odds of 36 to 1 or whether some of them were playing at odds of 35 to 1.
Section 32(1) of the Betting Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963 provides that any gaming shall be lawful if it is conducted in accordance with specified conditions one of which is that ( a) "(ii) the gaming is so conducted that the chances therein are equally favourable to all the players". But admittedly by virtue of subsection (2) the accused must prove compliance with this condition.
In the Case Stated by the Magistrate it is stated that the Appellant Club is a bona fide club conducted in a respectable and responsible manner. The essential facts as there stated are:
"( e) That the odds offered were in accordance with ( b) of the agreed facts, that is to say, in roulette 36 to 1;
( f) That payment of winnings in Roulette was made in accordance with ( c) of the agreed facts, that is to say, 35 to 1 in 'gaming chips' and the differential made up to 36 to 1 in 'marker chips';
( g) That Dice was played in like manner;
( h) That 'marker chips' could not be used on a table to make a bet, but could be exchanged for cash or 'gaming chips';
( i) That players were invited, in a memorandum circulated to members and in notices displayed in the club premises, to return all or some of their 'marker chips' to the club;
( j) That the above-named memorandum and notices emphasised that this return of 'marker chips' was voluntary;
( k) That a majority of the players in fact returned some or all of their 'marker chips' to the club;
( l) That the Club could not continue to conduct gaming in the way it did unless at least some members accepted the invitation to return their 'marker chips'."
……
"7. I was of the opinion that as a majority of the players returned their 'marker chips' to the club, they were thereby agreeing to participate in gaming at odds of 35 to 1 and not at 36 to 1.
Thus in practice, so far as most of the players were concerned, the gaming was not in fact 'so conducted that the chances therein are 'equally favourable to all the players'.
Accordingly I convicted the Appellants on each information and fined them £100 on each with 125 guineas costs on the first.
8. QUESTION
The question for the opinion of the High Court is whether, upon the facts found, I came to a correct determination and decision in point of law."
The contention of the Appellants is that it has been found as a fact in ( e) above that the odds offered were 36 to 1, that it has not been found that this offer was a sham, that the winners were in fact paid chips at those odds, that all were entitled to and some did exchange all the chips which they won for cash, and that there is no basis for any other inference than that those players who chose to return marked chips to the club were making donations to the Club independently of the game in response to the Club's invitation and in order to enable the Club to continue to conduct gaming.
I cannot regard the finding of the Magistrate in paragraph 7 above as satisfactory. It appears to me to contain a non sequitur. It states that as players returned some or all of their marker chips to the Club, they were thereby agreeing to play at odds of 35 to 1 and not at 36 to 1 which he had found earlier were the odds offered.
If any one player was in fact playing at odds of 35 to 1 then an offence was committed. But if any player was in fact playing at odds different from the odds offered to him by the accused club that could in my opinion only be because there had been some previous agreement or understanding between him and the Club or one of its servants: then so far as that player was concerned the odds purporting to be offered to him would not be the real odds at which he was playing, the handing to him of marker chips and his handing them back to the Club would be a sham, and he would be guilty of a breach of faith if he failed to hand back marker chips which he had won but tried to exchange them for cash.
Suppose a player has no clear intention in his mind as to what he will do with marker chips if he wins, the odds at which he plays cannot be one thing if he ultimately decides to keep the marker chips and cash them but something different if he ultimately decides to return them to the Club. And suppose he had a fixed intention to return any marker chips which he might win, but the Club was unaware of that: how could it be said that the Club had committed an offence by offering him odds of 36 to 1 and letting him play, merely because without their knowledge he intended to play at 35 to 1?
The learned Magistrate holds that by returning marker chips the members were thereby "agreeing" to participate at odds of 35 to 1. But it takes two to make an agreement. I think he must have meant that he inferred as a fact that one or more members had agreed with the Club to play at odds of 35 to 1 from the fact that the majority returned some or all of the marker chips which they had won. But we do not know from the findings how many only returned some of these chips and how many returned all, and plainly no agreement to play at 35 to 1 could be inferred from a return of only some of these chips, for by keeping some the player shewed that he did not intend to play at 35 to 1. I would agree that if there were a finding that particular players always at once returned all the marker chips which they won, that would warrant an inference that the Club were aware of that; and that if they continued to let these particular players play in that way, they must be held to have agreed to play at 35 to 1. But there is no finding that any player always immediately returned all marker chips which he had won. I take the finding to mean that after each spin of the wheel some of the winners retained some or all of the marker chips which they had won. But each particular player may sometimes have returned all, sometimes a part, and sometimes none of the marker chips which he won and no inference could be drawn from that. It would only be possible to draw the inference of agreement to play at 35 to 1 if a particular player regularly returned all his marker chips, and the findings do not appear to me to amount to that. The Club was conducted in a responsible manner: it offered odds of 36 to 1: and I do not think that it is possible on these findings to infer that there was any agreement or understanding with any one player that he would play at 35 to 1 and return all the marker chips which he might win.
We were referred to the decision of the Court of Appeal in ex parte Blackburn [1968] 2 Q.B. 118. If the facts found in the present case had come anywhere near the facts assumed in that case I would have no hesitation in accepting the inference drawn by the Magistrate. But there Lord Denning M.R. said "They give a winner two kinds of chips, ordinary chips on which he collects his winnings, and special chips which he throws back" and Salmon L.J. said:
"The normal practice is for the players to toss the special chips back to the croupier. Clearly the players are under no illusion....
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