Generate a structured brief — facts, issues, held, reasoning, and significance — for this case in seconds. Or browse the verbatim judgment via the source links below.
Subject_1 Indictment Subject_3 Theft . Facts: A prisoner, charged under an indictment which libelled “theft,” without any specification of the nature of the act, was proved to have feloniously appropriated four sheep which had been handed over to him by mistake, along with a number of others which he had been ordered to drive to his master's farm. Opinion of Lord Cowan, that the libel had sufficiently set forth the case proved by the evidence.
Lancaster, A.-D. , argued that the crime proved against the prisoner was theft, not breach of trust, and claimed a verdict of guilty.
Lord Cowan , in his charge to the Jury, said—That, in his opinion, the case of Douglas was not analogous to the present case. Here by a mistake the prisoner had been given the custody of certain sheep, and he had feloniously appropriated them; and that by doing so he committed theft, and theft was properly libelled in the indictment.
Auto-extracted from BAILII. Full structured brief in progress — the source links below give you the verbatim judgment in the meantime.
BAILII · Verbatim mirror
Multiple official and mirror sources — pick whichever loads cleanly on your network.
Common Room
0 comments · About the Common Room →
No comments yet — start the discussion.
Voted-best comments help future students and feed Caselaw's AI study tools.