Chic Fashions (West Wales) Ltd v Jones

A police officer who is lawfully on private premises may seize goods which the officer reasonably believes to be stolen and to constitute material evidence against the person possessing them for stealing or knowingly receiving them. The goods may be detained while reasonable grounds remain for contemplating that prosecution and regarding the goods as material evidence.

Lawfulness is judged when the goods are seized and detained. A reasonable seizure does not become unlawful merely because the goods later prove legitimate or no prosecution follows. A search warrant does not itself authorise the seizure of goods outside its description; the authority for such a seizure derives from the common law.

Police officers entered the respondent company's shop under a warrant authorising a search for garments stolen from a named manufacturer. They found none of the specified goods but seized 65 other garments which they reasonably believed had been stolen and would provide material evidence against the company or its officers. The garments were legitimate and were returned after the company's managing director gave an explanation which the police accepted.

The company claimed damages from the chief constable. The parties confined the proceedings to whether the seizure and temporary detention were lawful. The county court decided against the chief constable, who appealed.

The central issue was whether the common law authorised a police officer, lawfully present on private premises, to seize goods outside a search warrant which the officer reasonably believed were stolen and material evidence against their possessor for stealing or knowingly receiving them.

1. Appeal allowed unanimously. Judgment was entered for the defendant, with costs in the Court of Appeal and below. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.

2. Lord Denning MR held that an officer entering under a search warrant may seize goods outside its description where the officer reasonably believes that they are stolen and constitute material evidence on a charge of stealing or receiving against their possessor or an associated person. Diplock and Salmon LJJ decided the appeal on the narrower ground that there were reasonable grounds for believing the possessor was knowingly implicated. That narrower ground represented the common basis of the court's decision.

3. The warrant authorised entry, continued presence and a search for its specified goods. It did not authorise seizure of the 65 other garments. Their seizure was justified by the independent common law power arising from the officers' lawful presence, reasonable belief that the garments were stolen, reasonable suspicion of the possessor's criminal implication and evidential purpose.

4. The power protects the preservation of material evidence and, where appropriate, the restoration of stolen property to its owner. Detention remains justified only while reasonable grounds exist for contemplating the relevant prosecution and treating the property as material evidence. Once the officers accepted the innocent explanation, they properly returned the garments.

5. The seizure's legality depended on the circumstances existing when it occurred. Subsequent discovery that the goods were legitimate, abandonment of a contemplated prosecution or failure to use them at trial could not retrospectively invalidate a seizure which was reasonable when made. The court rejected the suggestion in Elias v Pasmore that actual use at trial was a necessary justification.

6. Diplock LJ deliberately left open the position where an officer suspects that property is stolen but has no reasonable ground for suspecting its possessor of criminal involvement. Salmon LJ was inclined to hold that the common law conferred no power of seizure in that situation. Lord Denning MR expressed the power more broadly, but the broader question was unnecessary to the decision.

7. The court questioned the continuing operation of trespass ab initio. Lord Denning MR regarded the doctrine as obsolete. Diplock LJ considered that it might require future re-examination, while Salmon LJ doubted that a later wrongful seizure would retrospectively invalidate a lawful entry. Because the seizure was lawful, no concluded majority ruling on that doctrine was necessary.

• Court of Appeal: Allowed the chief constable's appeal unanimously, set aside the county court result and entered judgment for the defendant with costs. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.
• Llanelli County Court: His Honour Judge Rowe Harding determined the agreed issue in favour of the plaintiff company. No citation is stated in the judgment.