Ruling on grapefruit gadget will take danger blades off streets

Bracknell magistrates in Berkshire had decided that the eight-and-a-half inch instrument designed to scoop the flesh of a grapefruit was a "food preparation gadget".

They held it was therefore not a knife – despite its curved, serrated blade – under the terms of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which bans knife sales to young people.

But Sir Anthony May, President of the Queen's Bench Division, declared the magistrates had erred in law and quashed their decision.

The declaration was welcomed by Steve Johnson, trading standards and licensing manager for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Berkshire.

He said: "From our point of view the legislation is there to stop children acquiring knives in the wider sense.

"If the magistrates' decision had stood it would have meant young people with malicious intent could have legally gone out and bought sharp-bladed 'kitchen implements'. It would have set a dangerous precedent."

Special permission had to be obtained to allow the test case knife, made by Judge kitchenware, into the Royal Courts of Justice in London so that the judge could see it at first hand.

It was bought by a 15-year-old working with trading standards officers in a test purchase from the famous Windsor department store of WJ Daniel & Co, which has a royal warrant to sell goods to the Queen.

A member of staff employed in WJ Daniel's kitchen department sold the 2.99 knife, which has a 4-inch long pointed blade serrated on both sides and curved at the end, to the under-age teenager in February last year.

The company was prosecuted for committing a criminal offence under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, as amended by the 1996 Offensive Weapons Act.

Three magistrates ruled the grapefruit knife was not a knife under the legislation.

The magistrates stated that it had a curved blade, making it distinct from a flat-bladed knife, and was designed for a single use and described in marketing material as "a gadget".

The judge said the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defined a knife as "a cutting instrument, consisting of a blade with a sharpened longitudinal edge fixed in a handle..."

The grapefruit knife fell within that definition and was covered by the 1988 Act so the judge ordered the magistrates' decision to be quashed.