Crown Prosecution Service v Piper

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

Graham Piper was convicted of drug trafficking at the Central Criminal Court in June 2001 and sentenced to a total of 14 years' imprisonment. On 19 December 2008 a confiscation order was made in the sum of £690,000, his benefit from criminality having been assessed at over £1.8 million. The only asset available to satisfy the order was Heathfields Farm at Wickford, Essex, valued at £690,000, registered in his sole name since February 1997 and subject to a restraint order since February 1999. The Crown Prosecution Service applied for the appointment of an enforcement receiver under section 29 of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994 (an earlier stage was decided by Treacy J in December 2010), and the defendant's wife, Janet Piper, intervened, claiming a beneficial interest in the property by reason of sums she said she had advanced to her husband before 2000.

Judgment Summary

Holman J heard the intervener's claim in the enforcement proceedings on 7 December 2011. As digested by Rudi Fortson KC, the court applied the following principles to property held in the husband's sole name: the starting point is that equity follows the law, so the beneficial interest is held by the sole registered owner and the burden lies on the wife to displace that presumption on the balance of probability; the court first asks whether the spouses had a common intention that the wife should have any beneficial interest, that intention being deduced objectively from their conduct; a financial contribution referable to the transfer of the property readily supports the inference of an intended interest; if a common intention as to the size of the interest can be found by evidence or inference, that fixes it; failing that, the wife takes the share the court considers fair having regard to the whole course of dealing between the parties in relation to the property. The court treated the law as having moved on from Lord Bridge's restrictive approach in Lloyds Bank v Rosset. The outcome on the facts is not recorded in the freely available sources.

Subsequent Treatment