Malicious Damage
Have I committed the offence of Malicious Damage?
A person who intentionally or recklessly damages or destroys property belonging to another or property jointly owned by the defendant and another person (e.g. husband and wife) has committed an offence of malicious damage. If the damage has been caused by fire or explosives, this "aggravates" the matter, making it more serious.
Under New South Wales' strict
laws, damaging property includes: removing, obliterating, defacing, or altering
the unique identifier of the property e.g. removing numbers from a mailbox.
Damaging property does not necessarily have to be violent.
Examples of "Malicious damage" include:
· Whitewashing a footpath even though rain would have ultimately washed away the "damage."
· Wiping off a program from a computer.
However, in the case of D.P.P. v Fraser [2008] NSWSC 244 , the defendants were members of Greenpeace who, along with others, entered a fenced off site containing a coal loader. They activated a safety isolation switch on a conveyor belt, rendering the conveyor inoperable and chained themselves to the conveyor belt. This resulted in the machine being put out of operation for almost two hours, which cost the company around $27,000.
The issue in the Local Court was whether damage had been caused to the conveyor belt by the defendants. Whilst there was no physical damage sustained, the prosecutor's case was that there was "an actual physical interference with the property, when the two accused attached heavy metal chains to the conveyor belt, making it temporarily inoperable."
On appeal it was held 'physical derangement' (though not necessarily permanent, or even lasting) to the property in question without 'physical derangement' was insufficient to establish damage.
