The Rolls Royce Theft That Created a Law

In the city of Melbourne, Australia, years ago, an incident occurred that demonstrated the importance of law. A woman and her daughter were driven by their chauffeur in their Rolls Royce car to a big department store. This was in the days before closed-in sedan cars were built, and before ignition locks made automobiles more secure to their owners. The women went shopping, and the chauffeur strolled a few yards up the street, idly gazing in the shop windows. An hour slipped away, and then the women returned to the place where the car had been left standing. To their consternation, they discovered that the car was gone! The chauffeur and the police officers were all frantically trying to trace the thief. A Rolls Royce in those days cost $20,000. In the midst of all the excitement, the car appeared. A well-dressed man drove it up to the curb and stepped out. A police officer arrested him.

“Excuse me, constable, but I must ask you to remove your hands from me,” the man protested.

“No! I have you under arrest,” the officer replied.

“Why? For stealing that car? But I did not steal it, as there is no law against it. If you do not desist, I will charge you with assault.” With these words he gave the policeman his card.

Bewildered, the officer read the name, and then the familiar letters “K.C.” Here was the highest attorney in the city, “K.C.” designating him as “King’s Council,” appointed by the Crown. What could it all mean? A strange thief this!

“You go ahead and make a case against me, and I will defend it myself in court,” the stranger urged. Then, turning to the ladies, whom he had inconvenienced, he apologized courteously, explaining the reason for his strange action. For a long time he had been urging the enactment of a law to protect car owners. He possessed a Rolls Royce himself, but on the statute books of the state of Victoria, there was no law against car theft. There were laws against sheep theft and cattle theft, but car owners were unprotected. And so, weary with protesting the need of such a law, he had demonstrated it by this forty-five-minute drive.

The next week the case was brought before the court, and this brilliant barrister pleaded his own case. It was a futile charge, for there was no law to condemn him. In less than three weeks a law was added to the statute books that made the “borrowing” of another man’s car a crime.

“Where no law is, there is no transgression.” If we admit that sin is in the world today, that admission emphasizes the existence of the law.

Topics: Legal Advocacy, Unintended Consequences, Legal System

Spiritual Application: Law shapes moral boundaries; actions can catalyze change.