The nature of honesty
<p>Lawyers seem to be accustomed to the phrase &quot;reasonably ought to have known.&quot;</p>
<p>Lawyers also sometimes have occasion to be concerned with the concepts of honesty and dishonesty.</p>
<p>If you reasonably ought to have known that the sky is blue, but didn't and thought it was green, and said so, when, if ever, would lawyers consider that dishonest?</p>

<p>Honesty is about actual knowledge, not &quot;knew or should have known&quot; which is a standard that the law holds people to. In criminal law, &quot;should know&quot; is important because many crimes have a scienter requirement, but you will usually have a hard time proving beyond reasonable doubt that a person had actual knowledge of some fact. It is almost commonplace that people who are not fluent speakers of English &quot;know&quot; things that are untrue and that a &quot;reasonable&quot; person would know to be wrong, such as being confused about the referent of &quot;eye&quot; versus &quot;ear&quot; (tragic, in the context of &quot;___drops&quot;). A reasonable person would not judge a factual mistake as being dishonest, and in general would never impute evil motives (dishonesty) to what appears to be an incomprehensible response (e.g. saying &quot;Yes&quot; to the question whether the sky is green). Lawyers are reasonable people, so they don't actually impute dishonesty to people at a surprisingly higher rate that other reasonable rate.</p>

<p>The reason for the frequent use of the phrase  &quot;reasonably ought to have known&quot; is that it can be very hard to prove what a person actually did know. Often we don't  want to treat as a crime things done by mistake but with good intent, so a law says that it is illegal to <strong>knowingly</strong> do X. But then anyone accused of X nay say &quot;oh but I didn't know&quot;, and how can one prove that such a person did know? So that law says that &quot;anyone who knew or reasonably ought to have known.&quot; is considered to have acted &quot;knowingly&quot;, Then one need only prove the objective facts and what the classic &quot;reasonable person&quot; would have concluded from those facts. This is a verfy common provision in laws and legal drafting.</p>
<p>Similarly, &quot;dishonesty&quot; is not just saying something false, it is <strong>knowingly</strong> doing so. If you think the sky is red but say it is blue, you are dishonest.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>when, if ever, would lawyers consider that dishonest?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A reasonable person would consider it dishonest unless there is evidence or knowledge that the one who alleges &quot;<em>the sky is green</em>&quot; has a visual or mental impairment. The person who alleges that &quot;<em>the sky is green</em>&quot; would be suspected of <em>malingering</em> (or more generally, of bad faith), since --by default-- there is no other credible explanation for his departure from a common notion.</p>

<h2><a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s4b.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Dishonesty</a> is defined in <a href="/questions/tagged/new-south-wales" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;new-south-wales&#39;" rel="tag">new-south-wales</a></h2>
<p><em>Crimes Act 1900</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p>4B Dishonesty</p>
<p>(1) In this Act--</p>
<p>&quot;dishonest&quot; means dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people and known by the defendant to be dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people.</p>
<p>(2) In a prosecution for an offence, dishonesty is a matter for the trier of fact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The suggested direction in the NSW Criminal Bench Book (A crib book for judges) for the <a href="https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/benchbks/criminal/fraud.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">fraud</a> of obtaining property includes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Crown must prove beyond reasonable doubt that in deceiving [the victim] in the manner alleged and so obtaining the property, the accused acted dishonestly. Dishonest in this context means that the accused acted dishonestly according to the standards of ordinary people. You as ordinary members of the community determine what is dishonest conduct. You must not only find beyond reasonable doubt that the accused acted dishonestly in deceiving [the victim] but also that [he/she] knew that [his/her] conduct was dishonest according to the standards of ordinary people.</p>
<p>[If necessary add</p>
<p>A person may obtain property dishonestly even if [he/she] is willing to pay for the property.]</p>
</blockquote>

<blockquote>
<p>If you reasonably ought to have known that the sky is blue, but didn't
and thought it was green, and said so, when, if ever, would lawyers
consider that dishonest?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the concepts that is widely used and most extreme involves cases of &quot;willful blindness&quot; in which the person deliberately refrains from obtaining information he or she should reasonable know in order to lack actual knowledge of it, even though the person who is being willfully blind believes that the information in question is something that he or she would be at a disadvantage if he or she actually knew.</p>
<p>So, if you believe fraud is probably occurring, but make a point of never examining the facts you would need to examine to be sure, you are being willfully blind and that is a form of dishonesty.</p>

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