Anderton v Ryan [1985] is a House of Lords case in English criminal law (in the highest court of the land at the time), on whether an act which would amount to an offence but which by virtue of a misunderstanding of the goods involved was impossible (nonetheless a fully believed offence by the perpetrator at the time, specifically of purchasing posited stolen goods) breaks section 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981; the court established against a similar defendant the next year that the reverse should hold true in future (per R v Shivpuri).