How strange

[simont]

Last month I went to Borders, in Cambridge town centre, and bought a pile of paperbacks.

This evening I was sitting on my sofa reading one of them; I turned a page and found a receipt stuck between the pages. A receipt for the book I was holding – from WH Smith, in Cambridge town centre, dated February of this year.

What happened there then? Best explanation I can think of is that somebody bought it from Smiths and then managed to leave it behind somewhere in Borders – perhaps in the café – and when the Borders staff came to clear up they saw a pristine paperback, assumed it was part of their stock, and shelved it. How strange. I wonder if I ought to notify somebody.

Comments

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Also possible that someone bought it from Smiths, decided to return it, went to Borders (who knows why) and returned it there instead.

Too late....

[(Anonymous)]

Borders has gone bust.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Presuming your scenario is correct, it could confuse Borders' stock systems when they sell one more of that book than they thought they had - but OTOH that might be concealed by shrinkage, and I don't think they really care at the moment given they want rid of everything.

From a different angle, Borders sold you a book that apparently wasn't theirs to sell you. You bought it in good faith and have a receipt for it, but they might technically have committed theft by finding. However, books are fungible, and anyway, who's going to raise a stink over a sub-tenner paperback?

[simont]

From a different angle, Borders sold you a book that apparently wasn't theirs to sell you. You bought it in good faith and have a receipt for it, but they might technically have committed theft by finding.

Yes, this was the sort of thing I was wondering about. I don't think I do have the Borders receipt any more, unfortunately, so it would be difficult to prove, well, anything very much really.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

O (who used to work at that Borders) can think of several plausible ways this could have happened. As well as your idea, there is the one someone else suggested, that it was returned to Borders and exchanged for another book - in the post-Christmas "fiesta" of February this might well not have required a Borders receipt, so long as it was a book also carried by Borders. Or, it could have been legitimately returned to Smith's and then returned to the publisher as part of some sale-or-return deal, and then shipped to Borders at a later stage.

[simont]

Interesting, thanks. I did consider it having been returned to the wrong bookshop, but had discarded the idea because of the receipt problem. I didn't know it was possible that a book returned to Smiths might end up shipped to Borders!

And it's comforting to hear that there's at least one possible explanation which doesn't require me to have been (even unwittingly) a party to (even accidental) theft :-)

[tackline.livejournal.com]

Ignorance is not a defense for being in possession of stolen goods.

[simont]

No? This suggests otherwise: the offence of handling stolen goods (Theft Act 1968 section 22) requires one to know or believe the goods to be stolen, and R v Hall 1985 clarifies "believe" for these purposes as the state of mind in which you don't know for sure they were stolen but no other explanation makes sense.

It seems clear to me that since two other explanations have been provided in this thread which do make sense and require no theft to have taken place (and which I'd guess are both at least as likely as my accidental theft scenario), I cannot be said to know or believe that the book was stolen and hence I am not guilty of handling even should it turn out to have been.

[pne.livejournal.com]

FWIW (and IANAL), I understand the situation in Germany to be something like this: it's not possible to obtain ownership ("Eigentum", as distinct from "Besitz" or possession) of stolen goods or counterfeit money, and if they are discovered, they will be confiscated and the police don't have to recompense you -- but you are, of course, free to bring suit against the shop that sold you those goods and demand that they give you something of worth in return for the money they took from you (or at least your money back).

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the basis for a story :)