Section 1(1) of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 provides - 'Any person who, in the course of a trade or business, -- (a) applies a false trade description to any goods; or (b) supplies . . . any goods to which a false trade description is applied; shall . . . be guilty of an offence.'
Section 2(1) provides - 'A trade description is an indication . . . of any of the following matters with respect to any goods . . . that is to say . . . (j) . . . use.'
The defendant, a self-employed taxi proprietor, owned a blue Peugeot car which he used as a taxi, hiring it out to part-time drivers and also using it for his own private purposes; he owned also one other similar car in green. He offered the two cars to a buyer who chose the blue car and the defendant agreed to take the buyer's car in part-exchange. The sale was the first such transaction carried out by the defendant. Later he sold the buyer's car to help finance the purchase of a white car, which he eventually sold to a taxi firm. The blue car's odometer registered a false mileage and the defendant was charged with contravening section 1(1) of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 in that he in the course of a trade or business (a) applied to the blue car a false trade description as to use and (b) supplied the blue car to which a false trade description as to use was applied. He was convicted by justices and appealed to the Crown Court, who found that both informations stood or fell together. It was common ground that the sale was not a one-off adventure in the nature of a trade carried through with a view to profit. The Crown Court were of opinion that there was some degree of regularity in the defendant's disposal of vehicles and that what was done was consequently in the course of a trade or business as opposed to the incidental disposal of a vehicle used in the conduct of a trade or business, and they dismissed his appeal.
On appeal by way of case stated -
Held, allowing the appeal, that for the purposes of section 1(1) of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, a sale consisted either of a one-off adventure in the nature of a trade carried through with a view to profit; or of an integral part of the business carried on as part of its normal practice; or as merely incidental to the carrying on of the relevant business carried on with some degree of regularity; so that, the sale being the defendant's first such transaction, it could not be said to be in the course of a trade or business, for it was common ground that the sale was not a one-off adventure in the nature of a trade carried through with a view to profit; and, since the transaction had to be viewed at the time of the alleged offence and it could not be said that the first sale established a normal practice, the sale was not an integral part of the business carried on, as part of its normal practice and, since the sale was to be regarded as a transaction incidental to the carrying on of the defendant's business, the sale did not fall within the category of being a transaction which was merely incidental to the carrying on of the relevant business that is carried on with some degree of regularity, for the necessary degree of regularity had not been established, since, even if the two later sales could have been taken into consideration, the number of transactions was still insufficient to establish the necessary regularity.
Davies v Sumner (1985) and R & B Customs Brokers Co Ltd v United Dominions Trust Ltd (1988) applied.