Manning v Weston

[2012] QDC 338

DISTRICT COURT OF QUEENSLAND

CITATION:

Manning v Weston [2012] QDC 338

PARTIES:

JOHN FREDERICK MANNING
(plaintiff)

v

KARINA LOUISE WESTON
(defendant)

FILE NO:

D21/2008

DIVISION:

PROCEEDING:

Trial

ORIGINATING COURT:

District Court at Bundaberg

DELIVERED ON:

9 November 2012

DELIVERED AT:

Brisbane

HEARING DATE:

19, 20 March 2012

JUDGE:

McGill SC, DCJ

ORDER:

Judgment for the defendant

CATCHWORDS:

TROVER AND DETINUE – Cause of action – action to recover money in cash tin – credibility – failure to discharge onus of proof.

COUNSEL:

The plaintiff appeared in person
A G McKean for the defendant

SOLICITORS:

The plaintiff was not represented
Charltons lawyers for the defendant 

1. This is an action strictly speaking for detinue in respect of a quantity of cash in a tin box.[1]  The plaintiff says that a tin cash box containing a quantity of cash which belonged to him had been hidden by him in a motor vehicle before the defendant wrongfully took possession of the vehicle, and was missing later when the police searched the vehicle.  He invites me to draw the inference that the defendant located, removed and kept the box and the money it contained, something the defendant denies.  The defendant’s case is that she knows nothing about any money in a tin box and if it ever existed, she did not take it.  The parties were for a time in a de facto relationship, but that relationship had come to an end prior to the time when the motor vehicle was removed.

   [1]Such an action is possible, although detinue does not ordinarily lie for unascertained goods such as currency:  Bullen & Leake, Precedents (3^rd ed 1868) p 312.

1. The parties did not even agree on who owned the motor vehicle, a panel van, although it was common ground that it had been owned originally by the plaintiff.  He said he had owned it for some 15 years; it was unregistered but driveable: p 20.  The defendant claimed that, before the relationship between them developed, she purchased the vehicle from him, and that thereafter it was, and indeed remained hers.[2]  The plaintiff denied this, and said that the vehicle was in his storage shed during the relationship: p 23.  His account was that he had previously had in a safe deposit box at the bank a tin box containing a quantity of cash, but about six months before the end of the relationship he removed this box and its contents from the safe deposit box, and hid it in the back of the vehicle: p 21.  During the relationship the defendant had been to the bank while he had accessed this box, and she had come into the bank when he removed the tin box from it, and she was present when he hid it in the panel van.[3]  After the relationship broke down the vehicle was removed from the storage shed; he saw it afterwards in a different shed, and later recovered possession of it.  However, the box and its contents were not there.