Urgent - Landlord holding work tools hostage

matttye

Salemicus wrote: »

Right on the first part, totally wrong on the second. You posted an excellent excerpt from the judgement, but you completely mangle it in your interpretation.

The question isn't whether the defendant saw his actions as dishonest. The question is whether the defendant knew that ordinary and reasonable people would see his actions as dishonest.

So when you write:


You are completely wrong. If I believe that I have the "right" to take cash from the till because "I'm such a hard worker" or "all property is theft," but I know that most people would view that as dishonest, then I'm guilty of theft under R v. Ghosh, because I "realised that was was doing was by those standards [i.e. the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people] dishonest." But, you are right that if I have a mental age of 5 and so I don't realist that most people would view that as dishonest, then it's not theft.

So the question is:

1. Is the landlord acting dishonestly by the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people?
2. Does he know that?

The landlord's idiosyncratic view of his own rights is not the issue. I think it's pretty clear he's acting dishonestly.

Whilst my explanation was poor, the end result will be the same whether you use my poorly written interpretation or your better written one. I do understand Ghosh, I just wrote it badly.

Ultimately if the defendant feels a sense of justification then clearly he would not consider that his actions are dishonest according to the standards of reasonable and honest people. If he did then he would not feel a sense of justification.

patman99

This could get very expensive for the LL if the idiot does sell the tools.
The op's friend could issue an MCOL claim for the full costs of replacing the tools and any assocciatted costs such as cost of hiring replacement tools as and when required to complete his work.

Perhaps instead of cash, your mate could stick a letter before action through the idiot LLs door giving him 24 hours to allow collection of tools or face a Court claim for the value of the tools and any lost income due their not being available to use.

This would be my advice. Let the moron know you are not going to mess around and play his silly games.