Odger's English Common Law

372 FALSE PRETENCES AND OTHER FRAUD.
original owner, and none the less because the authority was obtained by
fraud."
!
The rule of law is the same, hut its application is not so
simple, in cases where the prisoner obtains goods from a
servant of the owner. Here it is not enough that the servant
should intend to part with the property in the goods, but the
master also must intend that the servant should so intend
in other words, he must have given the servant authority,
actual or constructive, to part with the property in them when
in his discretion he thought fit to do so.
Thus, if a shopman has authority to sell the goods in his master's shop
either for cash or on credit, and X. by means of false pretences obtains
goods on credit from the shopman in his master's absence, the crime is
clearly false pretences ; for both master and servant intended to pass the
property in those goods to X. as well as the possession of them. But more
difficulty arises where the authority of the servant is limited, e.g., where he
is forbidden to part with any goods before they are paid for in cash, or
where he is directed to deliver certain goods toa particular person. Thus
A. bought a book at a book shop, paid for it, and subsequently sent his
servant to fetch it and take it to B. as a present. If X. meets the servant
en route and obtains the book from him by pretending that he is B., this
is larceny by a trick ; for A. is the owner of the book, and he never intended
to part with his property in it to any one except B. So the servant parted
only with the possession.
In R. v. Prince 2 a married woman obtained eight £100 notes from the
cashier of the London and Westminster Bank, where her husband had an
account, by presenting an order purporting to be signed by him, but which
was in fact a forgery ;
—
and the question was—Had the notes been stolen or
only obtained by false pretences ? The judgment of Blackburn, J., is
very clear and forcible :— " As the law now stands, if the owner intended
^the property to pass, though he would not so have intended had he known
the real facts, that is sufficient to prevent the offence of obtaining another's
-
property from amounting to larceny ; and where the servant has an authority
co-equal with his master's and parts with his master's property, such
property cannot be said to be stolen, inasmuch as the servant intends to
part with the property in it. If, however, the servant's authority is limited,
then he can only part with the possession and not with the property ; if
lie is tricked out of the possession, the offence so committed will be
larceny. ... In the present case the cashier holds the money of the bank
with a general authority from the bank to deal with it. He has authority
tto part with it on receiving what he believes to be a genuine order. Of
tthe genuineness he is the judge, and if under a mistake he parts with
1 Per Buckley, L. J., in Whiteharn Brothers v. Davison. [1911] 1 K. B. at p. 479.
» (1868), L. R. 1 C. C. R. 150.