Compiled from: Beijing Youth Daily
 
Case review
Recently, a news story on a short video platform caught netizens' attention. A mother shopping with her child at a supermarket, seeing the child extremely thirsty, took a drink from the shelf and opened it for the child to have a few sips. To her, this seemed like a perfectly normal little thing. However, a dispute arose with the supermarket owner at checkout.

 
 

At that time, the mother brought the opened drink bottle to the counter for scanning, but the supermarket owner refused to process the payment. He argued that drinking the beverage before paying constituted theft and demanded she pay ten times the price as compensation. But the mother was unhappy, insisting that the child couldn't resist thirst and drank early, and she would definitely pay the original price afterward—why should it be considered theft?
 
 
How should the mother's behavior be defined?
1.In terms of criminal offenses:
First, the author believes that the mother does not constitute a criminal offense. According to the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law on theft, the crime of theft must satisfy the elements of a crime. According to the prevailing four-element theory, these are the subject, subjective aspect, object, and objective aspect.
 
The short video shows that after the mother gave the drink to her child, she did not hide the drink nor leave the supermarket premises. Instead, she voluntarily went to the checkout counter to pay. Therefore, subjectively, the mother had no intent to unlawfully possess the shop owner's property. Objectively, the dispute between the mother and the supermarket owner occurred at the checkout counter, and the mother offered to pay. Both the actor (the mother) and the subject matter (the drink) were still within the supermarket, within the control of the supermarket owner. The mother did not engage in any act that would cause others to lose control of their property. Hence, the mother does not constitute the crime of theft as defined in the Criminal Law.
 
2. Administrative violation aspect
Based on the same analysis above, the mother also does not meet the conditions for theft under the Public Security Administration Punishments Law, and therefore no administrative violation exists.
 
3. Civil liability aspect
First, from the perspective of contract law, a sales contract relationship is formed between the supermarket and customers who come to purchase goods. Article 14 of the Contract Law stipulates that an offer is an expression of intent to enter into a contract with another party. Article 21 of the Contract Law stipulates that acceptance is an expression of intent by the offeree to agree to the offer. Article 25 of the Contract Law stipulates that a contract is formed when acceptance takes effect.
 
In this dispute, the supermarket placing beverages on the shelves with marked prices constitutes an expression of an "offer." The mother, as a customer entering the supermarket, confirmed the product type and accepted the price. Her act of taking the beverage from the shelf is an expression of "acceptance," at which point the sales contract was established. However, after the contract was formed, the timing of fulfilling the payment obligation was not explicitly agreed upon, making it difficult to deem the mother's behavior as a breach of contract. Some may argue that paying before use is a customary practice in supermarket shopping, but this view cannot be generalized. For example, in restaurants, some require payment after the meal, while others require payment before dining.
 
Secondly, from the perspective of tort liability law, the main condition for constituting tort liability is the existence of fault. As mentioned above, the mother in this incident, as the buyer under the sales contract, had already reached a contract with the supermarket when she took the beverage from the shelf. She had the ability to perform the contract and expressed her intention to pay for the goods. Therefore, her behavior itself did not involve fault and thus does not constitute a tort.