There has been an outbreak of skin disease for people that have eaten crops which have
been sprayed by pesticide. In order to deal with the problem, parliament introduced an act
which made it an offence to spray the pesticide for treating the crops. In the parliamentary
debate the minister stated that parliament needs to act quickly before more people are
infected. In a section of the act it states ‘crops’ shall include oranges, grapefruit, lemon,
lime and any other such fruit. David and Christine are farmers who have been convicted of
using pesticide on their crop of tomatoes. They appeal on the basis that a tomato does not
come within the definition of crops within the act.
I am going to advise David and Christine the methods the court of appeal could use to
determine
Statutory interpretation is the way the judges interpret laws of statue. The reason they do
this is because sometimes the wording in a statue may not be defined in much detail, it
may have more than one meaning, it may be ambiguous and sometimes using the literal
meaning can lead to an absurd result. There are different approaches judges may use to try
and understand the meaning of a word in a statue before applying in a case. In this case the
court of appeal will try identifying whether tomato comes under the definition of crops
after mentioning a list of citrus fruits including oranges, grapefruit, lemon, lime and any
other such fruits. The c of a will try to determine whether tomato comes under any other
such fruits.
There are 3 main approaches that judges tend to use when interpreting the wording of a
statue are the literal rule, the golden and the mischief rule. The definition of the literal was
cleared up in the case of sussex v peerage. It was held that if the words of the statue are
clear then the literal rule is taking the natural, plain and ordinary meaning of a word and
this must be applied as it represents the intention of parliament. The literal rule should be
used even if the outcome may seem harsh. One example of a case where the literal rule
was used is in the case of Whitley v Chappelle. Under the statue it stated that ‘it was a
criminal offence to impersonate ‘a person’ entitled to vote’. The defendant impersonated a
dead person and the court held he was not guilty because in the literal sense a dead person
