{"id":1269,"date":"2009-11-28T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-28T09:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2009-11-28T09:04:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T09:04:43","slug":"statutory-interpretation-police-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1269","title":{"rendered":"Statutory interpretation &#8211; police powers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>*Semple v Luton and South Bedfordshire Magistrates&#8217; Court<\/strong><\/em><strong> [2009] QBD<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<strong>[Statutory interpretation \u2013 absurd result if statute interpreted literally]<\/strong><br \/>\nD punched a police constable in the face.  The PC was assisting the landlord of a pub to eject D because he was drunk.  D was convicted in the Magistrates\u2019 Court and appealed by way of case stated.  If the officer had been acting outside his duty when the D had punched him D would be not guilty of assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Held<\/strong>:  A constable could use reasonable force when ejecting a customer when required to assist a licence-holder. Implicit in a licence-holder&#8217;s request for assistance in ejecting a customer from his premises was the request that the customer be prevented from re-entering those premises immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Any other construction of s 143(4) of the 2003 Act would be absurd. A licence-holder had such powers in respect of a customer, so for a constable&#8217;s powers only to be those of arrest in those circumstances would make no sense.<br \/>\nThe relevant legislative provision is Sec 143 of the Licensing Act 2003.  The previous provision had been s 174(3) of the Licensing Act 1964.  The 1964 Act provided that an officer ejecting a person from a pub was expressly empowered to use &#8216;such force as may be required for the purpose&#8217; those words had been omitted from the 2003 Act.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*Semple v Luton and South Bedfordshire Magistrates&#8217; Court [2009] QBD [Statutory interpretation \u2013 absurd result if statute interpreted literally] D punched a police constable in the face. The PC was assisting the landlord of a pub to eject D because he was drunk. D was convicted in the Magistrates\u2019 Court and appealed by way of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}