Bristol Magistrates' Court dismisses drill theft charge over uncertainty about permission

Bristol Magistrates' Court found Lewis Hargreaves not guilty and dismissed a charge of stealing his employer’s cordless drill. The Crown sought a conviction, but although it proved he took the drill, it did not prove that he acted dishonestly.

The dispute turned on whether taking a tool home without signing the workplace borrowing book amounted to theft when a supervisor’s message appeared to permit borrowing. The court left open whether permission covered that particular drill, finding uncertainty about Hargreaves’s belief rather than confirming every part of his account.

Witness 1’s admitted testimony and the supervisor’s presented statement supported the finding that Hargreaves took the drill from the stock shelf without signing it out. The supervisor said she saw him put it in his bag and had not authorised that drill to leave.

But her statement did not establish what Hargreaves had asked to borrow or what he understood. She had not heard an earlier discussion with another employee, and no further evidence resolved which drill the subsequent message concerned.

The message supported an inference that borrowing and a Monday return had been discussed. Its failure to identify the drill prevented it from conclusively proving authorisation, but did not strip it of value as evidence of an honest belief in permission.

The missing borrowing entry raised concern about authorisation; it did not itself prove dishonesty. The burden remained with the Crown to prove each required element, not with Hargreaves to prove innocence.

The Crown relied on the unsigned borrowing book and the supervisor’s denial of permission for the particular drill. It acknowledged that the message supported Hargreaves’s account, while arguing that its lack of detail left authorisation unresolved.

The defence maintained that Hargreaves asked permission, received approval and returned the drill on Monday. It also argued that frequent workplace borrowing and a lack of training explained the misunderstanding.

The court did not accept those workplace-practice and training claims as independently established facts. It likewise distinguished the defence’s suggestion that Witness 1 had borrowed a drill from the admitted testimony establishing Hargreaves’s taking.

Hargreaves’s account was that he wanted the drill for weekend shelf repairs and understood his supervisor’s reply as approval. He said he returned it to the stock shelf on Monday, but there was no signed return record.

The judgment gave that return account limited weight: no separate document or admitted testimony independently proved it. Even without treating the return as established, the message and the gap in the supervisor’s knowledge left dishonesty unproven. The dismissal therefore did not establish that permission was definitely given or that the entire defence account was verified.