criminal

Criminal damage mode of trial dependent on value of damaged property value cost of repair or replacement immediately after alleged offence, excluding consequential lossR (Abbott) v Colchester Justices: QBD (Latham LJ and Potts J): 15 February 2001The claimant and several others were charged with criminally damaging a crop in a form which included genetically modified maize.

Valuation reports from two experts covering the consequential loss suggested a possibility that the value of the damaged crop exceeded 5,000.

If that had been the value the claimant would have been entitled, having regard to schedule 2 to the Magistrates Courts Act 1980, to elect trial by jury.

However the value of the loss reported by the owner of the crop was 750.

The justices concluded that the value of the damage was 3,500 and accordingly ordered that the charge be tried summarily.

The claimant sought judicial review.Peter Weatherby (instructed by Linn & Associates Solicitors, Harwich) for the claimant.

Jonathan Ashley-Norman (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Essex, Chelmsford) for the prosecutor.Held, refusing the application, that the value of damage, to be determined in accordance with schedule 2 to the 1980 Act, was the value of the property itself criminally damaged, and no regard was to be had to any consequential loss for which damages would be recoverable in civil proceedings; that, therefore, the value was to be assessed as the cost of restoration immediately after the time of the act alleged or, if the damage were beyond repair, the cost of buying a replacement on the open market; and that since, on the materials before the justices, the only report which identified that value was that given by the owner of the crop they had been entitled to conclude that the charge was triable only summarily.