. Rob PC Paul Perhaps you misinterpreted that sentence. The meaning was " If you have a legal (or Statutory) defence (ie.one that means that you are automatically not guilty)......then no offence has been committed. yes it has. the procession of law is quite linear. perhaps you are back-pedalling and now wish you'd rephrased the point you made ?
Not at all, but maybe I could have expressed it better. Here is the sentence:
Wanted car thief end in crashA prolific car thief who washed and valeted cars before abandoning them has died in a road accident. Colin Sadd, 44, from Sheffield, was apparently stealing a car from a garage at Much...
"If you have a legal defence that means you are automatically not guilty, then no offence has been committed".
Notice the "If......then......" structure? For it to be interpreted as "if you have a legal defence, you are automatically not guilty", the following "then" after the comma would have to be "and". Otherwise it makes no grammatical sense.
however, back to whatyousaid: "There's no such thing as an offence that has a legal defence" is plain wrong. there are defences.
If there are defences, then these are circumstances where the action is *not* an offence, ie exceptions to the offence. To say these are offences that have a legal defence is merely a play on words, not a legal but an English language argument. So to allow this one to end, I will concede that if you have an offence, and an exception, then I suppose it could be said that "this offence has this defence", ignoring temporarily the fact that the defence negates the offence.
I will also adjust my opening line to say that there is no such thing as *committing* an offence that has a legal defence. Happy now?
Fantastic Afternoon DriveMark Hewitt oh, yeah, I forgot. this newsgroup isn't aboutdrivingit's aboutcomplaining-. silly me ! and well doneyoufor reinforcing...
-- Rob
