(no subject)

[ewx]

£2.44 wine costs shopkeeper £2,600

Fining them for selling alcohol illegaly is fair enough. Making them carry the costs resulting from bodging their prosecution seems wrong, though.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That appears to be half an article with no explanation of what happened to the original prosecution.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Quite. C- for the Guardian.

[senji.livejournal.com]

If the Sunderland taxpayers want £1600 lawsuits to happen then I think they should pay for them, to be honest.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Er, no, the cost of stopping people breaking the law should be borne wherever possible by the people who are trying to break the law, not the victims.

[mair_in_grenderich]

the people who are trying to break the law

15 year old girl trying to buy alcohol?

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Technically the law is broken by the seller, not the buyer, in this sort of transaction.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

Technically it's broken by all three of the buyer, seller and licensee. (The seller and licensee might be the same person, of course.) They just tend not to prosecute the buyer in this situation.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That's because the buyer tends to be someone being paid by trading standards to carry out the test purchases, so if they prosecuted the buyer they'd have to prosecute themselves for conspiracy and incitement.