Debenhams v Gee May 2012

[Amethyst]

This is a case of civil recovery – Following the admitted theft of a perfume gift set from a store, subsequent recovery of those goods outside the store, and the defendants exclusion from all stores and prosecution for the attempted theft in a magistrates court, Debenhams sought to recover from the defendant the sums of £82.50 staff/management time, investigating and dealing with an incident; £24.75 in administrative costs, again resulting from the same incident; and £30.25 being apportioned to security and surveillance costs.

Debenhams were awarded the amounts claimed and their costs.

Both the Judgment and the transcript of the hearing can be accessed here

[CleverClogs]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

From page 13:

That consideration is slightly different when one considers Miss Ongley’s time and Mr Baluja’s time. Miss Ongley is somebody who directly generates revenue for the claimant by generating sales within its store. Mr Baluja is a member of staff who indirectly generates profits for the claimant by deterring thefts during the normal course of his employment. That obviously has a commercial benefit to the claimant because the claimant is paying Mr Baluja an appropriate rate.

As it is immediately evident that the theft was not prevented nor was the foolish thief deterred in the least, one must surely wonder what that "appropriate rate" might be.

If it were my store, I believe I would give that defective detective notice.

From page 14:

MR MUNRO: I have drawn your attention in my skeleton argument to a different decision which is not binding on you by a County Court judge earlier this week and you will see my submissions on that. The learned judge did not deal with the legal submissions that I have made to you in the skeleton argument and indeed did not deal with the submissions that I have expanded to you orally. I do not know if there is anything that I could usefully add to what I said in my skeleton argument in that regard.
Unless I can assist you further, those are my submissions.

That was not the impression I got from the judgement in the Oxford case.

[CleverClogs]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

Moving on to the misjudgement:

26. Moving on to consider the requirements of British Motor Trade, again very much the same thing applies. Mr Dickson has set out the cost to Debenhams of maintaining safe security equipment, £653,000 over their entire store network and that it costs per case £92.25. I have no reason to doubt his figures.

Did you not, District Judge Murdoch?

How about arithmetic? I presume that it has not changed significantly from when you or I were both at school, yet you somehow seem to have produced an integer value - a whole number of incidents, as it is plainly impossible to have only part or a fraction of an incident - from £653,000/£92.25. My calculator gives the total number of incidents per year as 7,078.590786 - which is plainly wrong.

Either the gross cost must be wrong or the alleged mean cost per incident must be wrong, as it is utterly impossible to have 0.590786 of an incident.

Of course, those are not the costs per incident. Those are the costs paid by the claimant plc for security - both staff costs and costs of equipment.

The staff costs will have been deducted from the claimant plc's gross profits before any tax on net profits would be paid, and the equipment costs will also have been amortized from the gross profits before any tax on net profits would be paid, so those costs have already been effectively paid by the Consolidated Fund of the Exchequer!

As I have said already, the reason why those systems are maintained are, I accept, partly for health and safety, no doubt if there was a fire alarm the security staff would help in evacuating the stores. I have no doubt that that is true but they are also substantially there to prevent thefts from their stores and that is a cost to the claimant which they would otherwise not have if there were no thefts from their stores.

At best, that argument is fanciful; one might as well try to recover the cost of the cash registers from ordinary shoppers and/or store employees on the grounds that, if employees and shoppers could only trouble to add up their own bills, expensive till systems would not be needed.

And yes, it really is that silly.

So, again, I accept that falls within them having to maintain a department to prevent the very actions that the defendant had caused to them and that although the expenses probably cannot be precisely done, although Mr Dickson does his best at £92.25, I accept there is a cost and that the £92.25 is the best evidence that I have.

He does seem easily pleased, doesn't he?

Personally, I blame his former teachers.

[Guest]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

Firstly , Thank you for Amethyst for posting this just as i am going to bed

I presume that both these have been verified, the judgment looks kosher but the record of the heating sounds like something out of boys from the black stuff.

It was bound to happen and will continue to happen until someone sets a precedent.

It is unusual, it must be said for a DJ to disregard opinion of a circuit judge, if that is what happened, and not be persuaded or at least interested in hearing his views.

We must be discuss the way he came to the view that there were actual losses, this is the only point in law.

The fact that the defendant was a convicted thief and had made unwise(alleged) remarks in the hearing , should not have been an issue.( nobody there to till him to keep his mouth shut i presume) Personally I think it did, but we must presume they did not. Because that would mean that the judgement was effected by the behavior of the defendant and the DJ didn't make his findings purely on the evidence and that can't be true can it.

Night all

[CleverClogs]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

The defendant stated that, at the time of his moment of folly, he was somewhat inebriated.

Hence the disc jockey preferred the evidence of the store defective who was apparently sober.

[Tools]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

Unfortunately the defendant did not request CCTV footage which may have backed up his claims both within the store (would have shown his actions before leaving the store) and outside (would have shown if he was outside talking to his friend before making off and exactly in what manner the gift box was discarded. If that footage had been available then either submission could have been verified/disregarded.

[EXC]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

What stands out for me in this judgment is that DJ Murdoch has misapplied the case law of Aerospace Publishing Ltd which found that (emphasis supplied):

''(b) The claimant also has to establish that the diversion caused
significant disruption to its business.

(c) Even though it may well be that strictly the claim should be cast in terms of a loss of revenue
… nevertheless in the ordinary case, and unless the defendant can establish the contrary, it is
reasonable for the court to infer from the disruption that, had their time not been thus diverted,
staff would have applied it to activities which would, directly or indirectly, have generated
revenue for the claimant in an amount at least equal to the costs of employing them
during that time.”

In the Northampton judgment DJ Murdoch finds that:

''It is therefore reasonable for the court to infer from the disruption that that member of
staff would otherwise have been engaged in activities which would have directly or
indirectly generated revenue for the claimant.''


It is clear from the context of the preceding paragraphs that DJ Murdoch's reference to 'staff' is the security guard and as such security guards do not, in any way, contribute to the generation of revenue. They may contribute to the generation of profits but that is something entirely different.

Any half decent lawyer would have pointed this out to the judge but as the defendent was representing himself (unlike the Oxford County Court Case) that didn't happen.

[Guest]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

HI
I found this calclation intersting.

26. Moving on to consider the requirements of British Motor Trade, again very much the
same thing applies. Mr Dickson has set out the cost to Debenhams of maintaining safe
security equipment, £653,000 over their entire store network and that it costs per case
£92.25. I have no reason to doubt his figures. As I have said already, the reason why
those systems are maintained are, I accept, partly for health and safety, no doubt if
there was a fire alarm the security staff would help in evacuating the stores. I have no
doubt that that is true but they are also substantially there to prevent thefts from their
stores and that is a cost to the claimant which they would otherwise not have if there
were no thefts from their stores. So, again, I accept that falls within them having to
maintain a department to prevent the very actions that the defendant had caused to
them and that although the expenses probably cannot be precisely done, although Mr
Dickson does his best at £92.25, I accept there is a cost and that the £92.25 is the best
evidence that I have.

So it follows from this that if less people stole from these stores, each thief would have to pay a larger part of the running costs of these systems. Presumably if there was only one theft he would have to pay £653,000
The problem is of course that you need precisely the same amount of equipment to catch one thief as you need to catch a thousand so how can you quantify the cost.

Not that the cost is a result of the losses it is part of the running costs of the shop and is paid for out of the profits, as pointed out by the eminent judge in the Ms B hearing. Any revenue gained from these fined would be profit not recovered damages.

D

[MIKE770]

Re: Debenhams v Gee May 2012

Well I never, the cost of security maintaining safe security equipment, blimey those things which I never saw when I was a department Manager in Debenhams and covered all the areas in store, must of spent some money then, there again was decade or more ago.!!