I don’t care what it’s BIN, I want to know what it is now!!!!

Televisions lie!

I don’t mean as in, all news reports are exaggerated, kind of way (although yes, that too).

But in a, that would never happen in real life, kind of way. If things like Eastenders and Coronation Street were representative of real life, everyone would be spending so much time fighting, having affairs, having babies and trying to kill each other, no one would ever do any real work. Although that might explain a lot!

For that reason, I rarely watch much TV, and I particularly avoid anything to do with law, because I’d spend all of my time jumping up and down shouting “but the Judge would never say that” or “that’s not correct procedure”.

However, other people do watch these programs and often assume that there is at least a grain of truth in them, and so I am sometimes asked questions based on what they assume is reality. There are a lot of common misconceptions, based on what people see on TV or read in the papers, such as the assumption that if you have lived with someone for a specific period of time (such as 2 years) you have become common law spouses – there is no such thing! Or that if you have a child with someone who you are not married to, the baby still gives you rights to maintenance for yourself (only true in very high net worth cases like footballers). Or that if there is no written contract, there is no contract at all (a contract can come into existence on a handshake, or a nod of the head or even just from conduct).

One of my favourite misconceptions is about rubbish. It’s often assumed that if you’ve thrown something away, it is “up for grabs” which means it’s ok to go through someone’s rubbish bin to look for incriminating evidence (which is always found, right at the bottom, just when the hero/heroin/other is about to give up). Actually, that may not be the case. If the bin is still on the homeowners’ property, then it hasn’t actually been thrown away yet, and could still be retrieved by the homeowner. However, once the bin has been collected, the contents actually become the property of the statutory waste authority, who don’t owe you any responsibility or duty of care if you accidentally throw away something in error.

For most of us it is unlikely that we would have anything that is both extremely valuable and at risk of being accidentally thrown away. However, as we become more and more reliant on small devices, it increases the chances that this could become an issue. Take, for example, a recent case involving a hard drive that contained bitcoin estimated to be worth £600m, which was accidentally disposed of, and ended up in a land fill. Of course, I know you’re all saying “that wouldn’t happen” and “surely the owner would have put that somewhere so safe that no one would ever accidentally throw it away, like, perhaps, putting it IN a safe”. But no, the hard drive ended up being thrown away, and the owner took the statutory waste authority to court for an order to get it back and failed. Ownership in the hard drive transferred to the authority, who were under no obligation to return it, even if it could be found.

So, if you see your bin men driving around in gold plated refuse trucks, you’ll know they work for the authority in question!

It also proves that sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction and that (as I often say) you cannot believe everything you see, read, hear, particularly when it comes to the law.

Kleyman & Co Solicitors. The full service law firm. No rubbish advice here.