6 May 2022
The appellant's conduct in accepting payment and handling change permitted the irresistible inference he was taking employment under s38AA of the Immigration Ordinance; identification of the employer was unnecessary once taking employment was established, therefore the magistrate's conviction was correctly upheld.
27 Aug 2021
The Court accepted the magistrate's factual findings as to the appellant's conduct (shelf rearranging and applying labels over 15 minutes, no purchase or interaction consistent with a customer) and held those proven facts permitted only the irresistible inference that the appellant was working in the shop; the alternative inference that she was merely helping was inherently improbable and lacked evidential basis, so the conviction and sentence were affirmed.
19 Jul 2019
The magistrate's credibility findings were not plainly wrong and, on the proven facts of the appellant unloading goods in an industrial carpark with the driver present and no innocent explanation, the only reasonable and irresistible inference was that he was undertaking employment contrary to s38AA, proved beyond reasonable doubt.
24 Sept 2018
The judge refused certification because the four questions raised were factual issues reducible to the sufficiency and evaluation of evidence in this case rather than points of law of general importance; the magistrate's factual findings supported the inference that the applicants were engaged in unloading scrap metal as casual employees and the lorry, when considered together with the recycling yard and evidence of payment to the driver, was a usual place of employment for unloading.
18 Oct 2017
The Magistrate accepted PW1's credible evidence that the Appellant was assembling a stall in the context of multiple stalls and equipment; that conduct, in the absence of any plausible alternative explanation, gave rise to the only irresistible inference that the Appellant was taking employment (paid or unpaid); the misstatement that the employment was for money and the careless misquotation of Ip Po Fai did not render the conviction unsafe, and the appeal was dismissed.
31 Mar 2015
Given the appellant was the owner and the only person present selling goods alone demonstrated knowledge and control of shop items and prices, it was reasonable for the magistrate to draw an irresistible inference that the appellant had placed Hossen in a position of trust and therefore employed him; conviction is safe and appeal dismissed.
28 May 2014
The conviction was quashed because the prosecution failed to prove employment beyond reasonable doubt: the evidence only established manual work at a derelict site and lacked proof of ownership, control, payment, provision of tools or other indicia of an employer-employee relationship; therefore the inference of employment was not the sole and irresistible inference and the conviction constituted substantial and grave injustice.