Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 21:15

From: Mårten Schultz

Subject: Illegal gains

Dear All,

I'm struggling a bit with an article that I am supposed to write on a subject that I believe is rather familiar to many of you but which has not, I think, been dealt with that much in Swedish law before. The issue is whether and to what extent criminals are excluded from the protection of tort law. More specifically I'm dealing with cases of property damage, where the property was in the possession of the criminal as a direct result of the criminal activity.

A neat case dealing with this will be decided by the Swedish Supreme Court soon. The circumstances were something like this: Drug dealer A has made money by selling narcotics. B robs A, and is criminally responsible for the robbery. A wants compensation in tort law for the stolen drug money. Is this situation different if B steals property that A has in her turn stolen from O (owner) (if, say, O is unknown)?

I would be very - very! - interested to see what kind of discussion these kinds of issues have raised in common law.

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