Court of Appeal, Criminal Division
Published March 5, 2008
Regina v W. Stevenson & Sons (a Partnership)
Before Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Royce
Judgment February 25, 2008

Legislation could render a partnership criminally liable as a separate entity from its individual partners. However, confiscation proceedings could not properly be brought against the partners’ personal assets on the basis of the partnership’s conviction.

The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, so held in dismissing applications by W. Stevenson & Sons, a partnership) whose business included auctioning fish, and its eight partners, for permission to appeal against the partnership’s conviction at Truro Crown Court (Judge Wassall and a jury) on October 19, 2006, on eight counts of failing to submit a sales note which accurately indicated the quantities and price at first sale of each fish species, contrary to article 3(1)(d) of the Sea Fishing (Enforcement of Community Control Measures) Order (SI 2000 No 51) and its conviction, following guilty pleas, on April 13, 2007, on 37 further counts.

Mr Philip Hackett, QC and Mr Jonathan Ashley-Norman for the applicants; Mr Martin Edmunds, QC, for the prosecution.

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the judgment of the court, said that a point had arisen as to the jurisdiction of the court to entertain applications brought by the individual partners.

The only person who had standing to appeal against a conviction was the person who had been convicted. If the prosecution was correct in submitting that the individual partners were not defendants to the indictments and had not been convicted under them, then they could have no standing to appeal.

In those circumstances, the court had indicated that, while the applications raised issues of importance that would justify the grant of permission to appeal, it did not propose to grant permission at that stage.

The court would consider the issues raised before turning to the consequences of its conclusions.

Was it possible to render a partnership criminally liable as a separate entity from the individual partners?

The difficult question of whether a criminal statute or statutory instrument applied to a partnership as an independent entity and, if so, how that impacted on the potential liability of individual partners did not arise where the legislation in question provided express answers to those questions.

Their Lordships could see no ground for suggesting that such provisions were not permitted by law or capable of being effective in law.

In as much as business activities were conducted in the name of a partnership and the partnership had identifiable assets that were distinct from the personal assets of each partner, there was no reason why a partnership should not be treated for the purposes of the criminal law as a separate entity from the partners who were members of it.

Did the 2000 Order purport to render partnerships liable as independent entities?

Their Lordships had no doubt that it did. It drew a clear distinction between a partnership and an individual partner.

Not merely did that make it clear that a partnership could be independently liable, it made it clear that a partner would not be liable unless the offence had been committed with his consent, connivance or due to his neglect.

Was the partnership effectively indicted?

The 2000 Order did not provide that a partnership should be indicted in its partnership name rather than in the name of the individual partners.

The applicants submitted that, in the absence of some legislative provision for the manner in which a partnership should be indicted, it was simply not possible to give effect to the legislative intent that partnerships should be susceptible to the criminal legal process.

Their Lordships did not agree. The appropriate procedure was obvious. It would have been quite wrong to frustrate the legislative intention by failing to adopt it simply because it had not been enshrined in a rule.

Did the resultant convictions expose the individual partners to liability?

The effect of the Order was that proceedings could only be brought against an individual partner if that partner was complicit in the offence committed by the partnership.

It necessarily followed that, where a partnership alone was indicted, any fine imposed could only be levied against the assets of the partnership.

If individual partners were at risk of being subject to criminal penalties in respect of offences committed by a partnership, then justice would demand that the criminal process should contain provisions designed to enable individual partners to challenge the alleged liability of the partnership.

As to confiscation proceedings, the relevant provisions of section 72, and following, of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applied to an offender. The individual partners were not offenders.

Confiscation proceedings could not properly be brought against their personal assets on the foundation of the convictions of the partnership.

The individual partners had not been convicted and thus had no standing to appeal against conviction and their applications were refused. The partnership had shown no arguable ground for appealing against its convictions and its application was refused.

Solicitors: Follett Stock, Truro; Solicitor, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

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