Ignorance of the law is no defence

Ever had a bad day in court? Lost a trial you thought was a sure fire winner? Got earache from your client?

Take pity on the hapless Mr. Cammerman, who had the Armageddon of all bad days when he appeared in the Court of Appeal before Lord Justice Toulson on behalf of Customs making a submission based on Regulations that were five years out of date.

In an exchange that wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of Private Eye between Judge Cocklecarrot and a quivering pupil, Toulson LJ grabs Cammerman by the scruff of the neck and tosses him around like a cat playing with a half dead mouse

MR CAMMERMAN: Can I in open court echo the apology that I have communicated in writing to the court.

LORD JUSTICE TOULSON: Yes. (Pause)I am just trying to find among the recent cascade of emails that we have had, the one which actually explains the source of the misinformation.

MR CAMMERMAN: That would be an email from myself, my Lord.

And so on..

The Judgement merits reading in full,  not least for the car crash factor but becuase it raises a number of interesting

points of wider application.

R v Chambers [2008] EWCA Crim 2467

Lord Justice Toulson identified four causes for the chaos:

1. The majority of legislation being passed is secondary legisation. That is, it is not passed directly by parliament, but is the result of Ministers laying regulations before parliament (statutory instruments).

2. The sheer volume of legistation being passed means that lawyers are struggling to keep up. In 2005 alone, there were “2868 pages of new Public General Acts and approximately 13,000 pages of new Statutory Instruments” – to which should be added another 5,000 pages of European Directives and Regulations, plus the outpourings of our new devolved assemblies.

3. On many subjects the legislation cannot be found in a single place, but in a patchwork of primary and secondary legislation.

4.  There is no comprehensive statute law database with hyperlinks which would enable an intelligent person, by using a search engine, to find out all the legislation on a particular topic.

OPSI, the publicly available database had not been updated. Had prosecution counsel serached Lawtel or Westlaw he would have found the amendments in full. This does raise some interesting questions as to whether the general citizenry, for whoses benefit these laws and supposedly made, and be critised, or indeed punished for breaches or laws that a reasonable enquiry would not uncover.

Mr. Cammerman has my heartfelt sympathy, and every lawyer reading the judgement will no doubt inwardly be thinking “Thank **** it wasn’t me..”

(Credit to The Register for details of this story which can be accessed here. )