The Black Friday shop fights

guttenberg

The stories about the arguments/fights in shops over the Black Friday sales got me wondering. Could it legally be considered theft, if for example, you had a heavily discounted item in your trolley, and someone grabbed it and legged it to the tills? At what point do you legally take possession from the shop? aside from public order, could such actions theoretically be considered as breaking any laws?

This is entirely hypothetical by the way, and is not based on any actual real life event.

seamus

No, I don't think so. In reality the owner of the property is the shop, so it could not be considered theft unless they deliberately attempted to remove it from the shop without paying.

You could get a scenario where a person A is standing at the till with an item in their hand before having paid, and person B comes up and makes an offer for the same item. The retailer can choose to accept the offer from person B and person A has no comeback.

Legal possession only occurs when the contract has been formed - as I understand it, this is either when the money has changed hands or when the seller has accepted a promise to pay (like a cheque).

Grasping at straws here, could there theoretically be some violation of privacy called upon? In that if the person put the item in a carrier bag rather than a trolley, and someone else stuck their hand in that carrier bag to remove the item, you could claim some form of violation, possibly?

MarkAnthony

seamus wrote: »

Grasping at straws here, could there theoretically be some violation of privacy called upon? In that if the person put the item in a carrier bag rather than a trolley, and someone else stuck their hand in that carrier bag to remove the item, you could claim some form of violation, possibly?

Again grasping at straws but something is niggling at the back of my mind ref trustee of the property. It's a non runner of course but I love these theoreticals.

What's hopefully not so theoretical is I sincerely hope shop are being charged by the police for the call outs and I hope some ambulance chaser, chancing PI guru cleans a few of them out with PI claims.

I hate this sort of idiot baiting retail muppetry.

ABajaninCork

Ha. Reminds me of the 'turkey run' that used to happen every Christmas when I used to work part-time for a well-known retailer.

Came back from my break and was told I'd be doing the 'turkey run' Soon found out what that meant...

We were pushing out stacks of fresh turkeys from the cold store. Such was the frenzy, we never even made it to the fridges! People were grabbing them as we pushed them out. In the end, we just gave up. Anyway - by 3pm, the last stack was out. Wandered on to the floor to tidy up. I was met by the sight of two women physically fighting over the last turkey! One lady had the turkey in her basket and put it down to pick up something from the shelf. Another woman was passing by with a trolley and took the turkey from the basket. Blood, guts and gore EVERYWHERE!! The poor turkey was ripped to shreds. And as for the women...

We were laughing hysterically at the sight. What made it all the more surprising was the fact the women were well-dressed and well-spoken. Very posh! A well-known actress who was a regular customer was standing there open-mouthed in shock.

Nobody was charged for the turkey. Just cleaned up the mess and carried on. Retailers generally won't charge as a gesture of goodwill. AFAIK, they will simply claim from their insurance.

234

guttenberg wrote: »

The stories about the arguments/fights in shops over the Black Friday sales got me wondering. Could it legally be considered theft, if for example, you had a heavily discounted item in your trolley, and someone grabbed it and legged it to the tills? At what point do you legally take possession from the shop? aside from public order, could such actions theoretically be considered as breaking any laws?

This is entirely hypothetical by the way, and is not based on any actual real life event.

Basic contract law. In supermarkets no contract takes place until you get to the till and hand over your money. So before then you only have a possessory title, the weakest form of title to goods. Definitely no possibility of theft if somebody steals it out of your trolley. If there were some kind of assault, etc then it would be different.

Victor

There are the basic arguments about possession.

There is the case of the church pew. If you are in possession of the pew, then you can't be unreasonably dispossessed of it.

Likewise, I would argue that only the true owner of the turkey / game console can dispossess the current possessor.

Aside from public order offences, the exact offence would be another matter.

nuac

I wonder about much of this stuff

The queue before the shop opens, the rush for some "bargain" "the last ----" etc.

Perhaps they are staged?

ABajaninCork

Unfortunately not. I've seen it for myself at home in London. My cousin in Austin, Texas was knocked to the ground in Walmart or Target (I forget which) one Black Friday. When she got up, some fella with a telly nearly took her head off again! :mad: