11 Del. C. § 845

This is the official text of 11 Del. C. § 845, part of Delaware’s Del. C — part of the compiled statutory law of Delaware, published by the state as "Del. C." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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§ Â 845. Theft of services.

Official statutory text

(a) A person commits theft when, with the intent specified in § 841 of this title, the person obtains services which the person knows are available only for compensation by deception, threat, false token, false representation or statement or by installing, rearranging or tampering with any facility or equipment or by any other trick, contrivance or any other device to avoid payment for the services.

(b) In any prosecution for theft of services where services have been obtained from a public utility by the installation of, rearrangement of or tampering with any facility or equipment owned or used by the public utility to provide such services, without the consent or permission of the public utility, or by any other trick or contrivance, it shall be a rebuttable presumption that the person to whom the services are being furnished has created, caused or knows of the condition which is a violation of this section.

(c) A person who has obtained services from a public utility by installing, rearranging or tampering with any facility or equipment owned or used by the public utility to provide such services, or by any other trick or contrivance, is presumed to have done so with an intent to avoid, or to enable others to avoid, payment for the services involved.

(d) The rebuttable presumptions referred to in subsections (b) and (c) of this section shall not apply to any person to whom such services have been furnished for less than 31 days or until there has been at least 1 meter reading.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.