The word ‘person’ in the Act, was interpreted to mean ‘landlord’. When dealing with a penal section, if there are two reasonably possible meanings, the court should adopt the more lenient one: ‘where an equivocal word or ambiguous sentence leaves a reasonable doubt of its meaning which the canons of interpretation fail to solve, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the subject and against the legislature which has failed to explain itself’
Judges:
Scrutton LJ
Citations:
[1921] 3 KB 404
Statutes:
Cited by:
Cited – Farrell v Alexander HL 24-Jun-1976
The House considered the construction of a consolidation Act.
Held: It is ordinarily both unnecessary and undesirable to construe a consolidation Act by reference to statutory antecedents, but it is permissible to do so in a case where the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Housing, Crime
Updated: 15 May 2022; Ref: scu.539432