Odger's English Common Law

LARCENY BY A TRICK DISTINGUISHED. 371
the goods or money parts with the possession, and does not intend to pass
the property, and there is at the time an intention to steal in the mind of
the person who obtains the possession, that is evidence of larceny." 1
"Where the owner of goods is, by a trick employed by a person
ammo furandi, induced to part with possession of the goods to that
person, not intending to pass the property, . . . that is larceny by a
trick. 2
For example, if A. tells B.'s wife that B. has sent him to fetch his
dressing-case, and B.'s wife, believing this statement, gives A. the case to
carry to B., and A. converts it to his own use, A. is guilty of larceny by a
trick. But if A. tells B.'s wife that he has won 10s. from B. on a bet,
and that B. says she is to pay him that amount, and she, believing him,
gives him the money, whereas no such bet was ever made and lost, A. is
guilty of obtaining money by false pretences.
If C. obtains goods from D. on credit by falsely pretending that he was
sent by B. to obtain those goods from D. for and on behalf of and on the
credit of E., G. is guilty of false pretences and not of larceny. It is true
that there is in this case no contract between D. and E., and therefore no
sale of the goods to E., 8 so that no property passes. Nevertheless D.
intended to pass his whole property in the goods to E. ; he never expected
to see them back again in his shop.
Again, where A. is induced by false pretences to send goods to B. on
sale or return, it is submitted that the case is not larceny by a trick ; for
A. intends to part with his property in all such goods as B. may retain,
and leaves it to B. to decide whether he will retain all or any, and which
of the goods. So if B. falsely represents to the owner of an article that
he has a customer who desires to purchase such an article, and thereby
induces the owner to deliver to him that article on sale or return for the
purpose of his endeavouring to get the supposed customer to buy it from
him, the case is not one of
false pretences.
larceny by a trick, but of obtaining goods by
4
" I think there is larceny by a trick where the owner of goods, being
induced thereto by a trick, voluntarily parts with the possession of the
goods, but does not intend to pass the property in them, and the recipient
has the animus furandi. ... On the other hand, goods are obtained by
false pretences where the owner of the goods, being induced thereto by a
trick, voluntarily parts with the possession of the goods, and does intend
to pass the property. ... It is, I think, obtaining goods by false pretences
where the owner, being induced thereto by a trick, voluntarily parts with
the possession, and either intends to pass the property, or intends to confer
a power to pass the property. If he gives, and intends to give, that power
and the power is exercised, the person who takes under the execution of
the power obtains the property not against, but by, the authority of the
1 Per Manisty, J., in R. v. Buckmaster (1887), 20 Q. B. D. at p. 187.
* Per Fletcher Moulton, L. J., in Oppenhnmer t. Frazer and Wyatt, [1907] 2 K. B.
at p. 73.
8 Cundy v. Lindsay (1878), 3 App. Cas. 459.
* Whitehwn Brotliers v. Davison, [1911] 1 K. B. 463.
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