Cases - Antonelli v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry

Record details

Name
Antonelli v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
Date
[1998]
Citation
1 EGLR 9
Legislation
Keywords
Estate agency - Estate Agents Act 1979 - Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974
Summary

Antonelli was convicted, in a USA court in 1976, of the offence of setting fire to a property which was not a dwelling house. He subsequently came to the UK from where he carried on business as a property agent. The Director General of Fair Trading considered Antonelli was unfit to engage in estate agency work and disqualified him from undertaking such work on the ground of his conviction. Antonelli appealed to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on certain grounds including the following:

  • the 1979 Act did not apply to convictions outside the UK;
  • the Act did not apply to convictions before the Act came into effect; and
  • setting fire to a property which was not a dwelling house was not a crime of violence.

The Secretary of State dismissed the appeal. So Antonelli appealed to the High Court and subsequently to the Court of Appeal. It was held that the Act applied to convictions occurring before the Act was passed and there was no ground for confining the word 'conviction' to conviction of an offence in the UK. All that is required is that the offence has the attributes of dishonesty, fraud or violence. Arson was an act of violence against property, and so the appeal was dismissed. The court observed that the Director General has wide powers of discretion in determining whether a person is unfit to act as an agent. The conviction itself is not determinative of the imposition of the order of disqualification.

In the context of the Antonelli case, it should be noted that section 5(4) of the Act provides that, where the only ground for disqualification is a criminal offence, then the order ceases to have effect as soon as the conviction is spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. However, as the court observed in Antonelli, some offences are so serious that they do not become spent at all.