Smith's Law of Theft has long been established as the standard work on the subject and is frequently cited in the Court of Appeal. This popular text provides both criminal law students and practitioners alike with a detailed and critical account of the law of theft and related offences.
As in previous editions, the book contains the full amended text of the 1968 and 1978 Theft Acts with a detailed analysis of the provisions of the statutes and the extensive case law which has grown up around them.Important new material includes the House of the Lords decision in R v Preddy [1996] 3 All ER 481 and the Theft (Amendment) Act 1996 which rapidly followed, primarily to fill the serious lacunae in the law created by Preddy.
These developments, along with such important decisions as those in Mazo [1996] Crim LR 435 and Hopkins and Kendrick [1997] Crim LR 359, which suggest some limitations on the far-reaching Gomez case, have been fully incorporated to give an accurate and fully argued statement of the law of theft as at 1 May 1997.