The Supreme Court in Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords UKSC 67 proceeded to dispense with the two-limb Ghosh test for criminal dishonesty in favour of a single objective test, as applied in the civil courts.
The Court of Appeal has today handed down judgment in R v Barton and Booth EWCA Crim 575, holding that the objective test for dishonesty as set out in Ivey is to be used in criminal proceedings in preference to the two-stage dual objective/subjective test set out in Ghosh.įor over thirty years the approach to defining criminal dishonesty was the two-stage test laid down in R v Ghosh QB 1053: was the defendant’s conduct objectively dishonest by the standards of reasonable and honest people, and if so did the defendant realise that his conduct was dishonest by the standards of those same people?
