Legal Case Summary
R v Rimmington; R v Goldstein [2005] UKHL 63
Report citations: [2006] 1 AC 459; [2005] 3 WLR 982; [2006] 2 All ER 257; [2006] 1 Cr App R 17; [2006] UKHRR 1; [2006] HRLR 3. Case note: [2006] Crim LR 153. Court: House of Lords, 27 October 2005.
Nuisance; whether offence at common law; human rights
Facts
Rimmington sent 538 postal packages containing racially offensive material to several people. Goldstein sent some salt and a cheque in repayment of a debt to a friend; he intended the inclusion of salt to be a joke but some salt leaked out during sorting and a postal worker feared it was anthrax. The sorting office was evacuated and a delivery was cancelled. Both were indicted for public nuisance. The defendants appealed.
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Issues
At a preparatory hearing, before any trial or conviction of Rimmington, the judge held that public nuisance continued to be an offence at common law and that the conduct alleged against Rimmington amounted to public nuisance. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision and added that the contents of the letters unreasonably interfered with the rights of others. As to Goldstein, the jury was told that they could convict him if they thought he ought to have known of the real risk that his actions could cause nuisance. Goldstein also lost at the Court of Appeal.
Decision/Outcome
The House of Lords allowed both appeals. Rimmington’s indictment did not disclose the required common injury; Goldstein’s conviction was quashed. Public nuisance is committed when a person acts in a way not warranted by law or omits to discharge a legal duty, with the effect that the act or omission endangers the life, health, property or comfort of the public or obstructs the exercise of common rights. Many offences causing public nuisance are now covered by statutory provisions and should be prosecuted thus, due to the primacy of statute over common law (unless there is good reason to resort to common law; avoidance of time limits would not normally be good enough). Secondly, separate harms to individuals could not become public nuisance simply by being part of a series; the offence required injury to the community or a significant section of it as a whole, regardless of how persistent the actions are. Thirdly, the mens rea for public nuisance is that the defendant knew or ought reasonably to have known, because the means of knowledge were available, that his action or omission would cause the nuisance. Goldstein did not intend the salt to escape from the envelope, and it was not proved that he knew or reasonably should have known that it would escape. It is the foreseeability of an unintended escape, and not the foreseeable consequence of salt escaping, that matters.
The traditional offence was sufficiently clear to meet the requirements of the common law and Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The extension to separate individual harms was not: the Lords disapproved the approach in R v Norbury and R v Johnson. The courts could neither abolish the existing offence nor expand it beyond its proper limits.
Source: House of Lords judgment on BAILII.
