THE QUEEN v. LAU WING KUEN

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

(Appellate Jurisdiction)

MAGISTRACY CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1067 OF 1988

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REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

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1. The appellant was convicted on the 31st August 1988 in the Magistrates Court at Western on 10 charges of theft and one charge of forgery.

2. The appellant was an insurance salesman employed by Sedgwick Chartered HK Ltd. ("Sedgwick")itself an agent for Crownlife Insurance Company, a Canadian Company ("Crownlife'').

3. The duties of the appellant had been to solicit buyers of life insurance in its various forms, to arrange completion of application forms from clients and to lodge them with Sedgwick or send them direct to Crownlife. The first premium was customarily paid by clients with the application form, and it was the appellant's duty to pay that to his employer, Sedgwick. The arrangement with all salesmen was that they should immediately hand over to Sedgwick all premiums received from applicants for insurance. The salesman is not supposed to put the premium money into his own personal account. He is not allowed to use the money for his own purposes. Money received by a salesman as premium for insurance was the property of Sedgwick.

4. It was the Crown case that the appellant, on ten separate occasions, stole individual amounts totalling approximately $52,000 in respect of money received as premium, and that he covered up the first theft by issuing what purported to be a policy of insurance when it was a forgery.

5. Mr McCoy, who appeared for the appellant at the hearing of the appeal, informed me that the appellant was not pressing his appeal against conviction. That being the case, I dismissed his appeal against conviction.

6. Mr McCoy then addressed me in respect of his appeal against sentence. The sentences imposed by the Magistrate were 18 months imprisonment on each of the theft charges to run concurrently and 9 months on the forgery charge to run consecutively to the other sentences. Mr McCoy argued, inter alia, that the sentence in respect of the forgery charge should not have been ordered to run consecutively to the other charges because it related to the same transaction.

7. Mr Coughlan, who appeared for the respondent, conceded that the Magistrate should have passed concurrent sentences and did not wish to argue the matter. I agreed with Mr McCoy's submission that the forgery charge arose out of the same transaction as the 1st theft charge and that a concurrent sentence was more appropriate.

8. In the circumstances I allowed the appeal and ordered that the sentences should all run concurrently.