Environment Agency v Churngold Recycling Ltd
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE MOSES
- LORD JUSTICE VOS
Areas of Law
- Tort Law
- Environmental Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case examined whether the Environment Agency could retain copies of documents obtained through allegedly unlawful statutory powers and if conversion could extend to document copies or intangible goods. The court concluded that the tort of conversion does not cover intangible property or copies of documents, thus allowing the appeal. Procedural history and prior judgments highlighted the limitations of asserting conversion for non-tangible entities.
Judgment
Lord Justice Moses:
This appeal should have been concerned with whether a court is entitled to require the Environment Agency to return copies of documents and digital material in circumstances where those documents do not comprise or constitute records within the meaning of s.108 of the Environment Act 1990. The appeal has, mistakenly, been confined to the question whether the tort of conversion may be extended to copies of documents or intangible goods. It is now too late to focus on the logically prior question concerning the return of material obtained by an unlawful exercise of statutory powers.
The facts and procedural history of this matter, fully recorded by His Honour Judge Havelock-Allen QC, from whose judgment the Environment Agency appeals, will explain why the appeal has become so limited.
In his judgment dated 2 October 2013, based on the assumption that the material was copied outwith the powers of the Environment Agency, the judge ruled that in an action for conversion he had jurisdiction to order the delivery up of all copies of such material. Accordingly, pending determination as to whether the material was, in fact, copied in excess of the Agency’s powers, the material would not be released to the Agency’s investigators and instead would remain quarantined.
During the course of a criminal investigation arising out of the removal of hazardous waste from various locations, on 25 September 2012 the Environment Agency purported to exercise the powers conferred by s.108 of the Environment Act 1995 at Churngold’s premises in Avonmouth and Hallen. Warrants had previously been issued by the Bristol Magistrates Court pursuant to Schedule 18 of the 1995 Act and there has been no legal challenge to those warrants.
The volume of documentation that the Environment Agency’s officers thought it needed to inspect for the purpose of the investigation was substantial. Electronically held information was copied on site by electronic transfer to storage media owned or controlled by the Environment Agency and in excess of 700,000 paper documents were temporarily removed from the premises for electronic scanning. The powers to investigate, inspect and copy are contained in s.108 of the Environment Act 1995. For the purposes of performing its functions as an enforcing authority (defined in s.108(15)) a person suitable to the authority may be authorised in writing to exercise any of the powers specified in s.108(4) (s.108(1)). Those powers includ