Ordinance.
Innocence of motive is not always enough: See Dickins
v. Gill (1896) 2 Q.B. 310. Nor does there appear to be any
requirement in this section that the conduct complained of should
have caused annoyance to any person. Is it (as Mr. John Reas has
asked) lawful excuse for persistently following a woman from
place to place (whether she knows or not that she is being followed.
that she has a beautifully turned pair of ankles ? Some women
might regard it as a compliment. Is it lawful excuse for watching
a building that one is a private investigator employed by a wife
to obtain evidence of her husband's adultery ? Is it lawful excuse
for one workman innocently to repeat to another a report which is
in fact untrue but which he honestly believes to be true that there
is a bomb at their place of work, a report which might induce the
second workman not to go to work ? Where the words have been us ed
in other statutes it has, we believe, always been in circumstances
where the act requiring to be excused was itself prima facie unlawful
morally wrong or at the very least undesirable (e.g. "behaving in
a threatening, abusive or disorderly manner") and we submit that
words used
the are inappropriate in the context of this section. Indeed the
section covers such a wide variety of conduct that we do not feel
justified in suggesting what final form it should take :
in our
view it needs to be completely recast.
32 We do, however, make the following observations :
(1) For the reason which we have given in commenting on
s. 26 we think that the words "he knows or ought to know"
should be inserted in every case where the mere possibility
of intimidation is an ingredient of an offence;
(ii) We cannot understand the intention of the legislature
in using the words "which is likely to or might". Where
conduct is likely to have a particular consequence we would
have thought there was inevitably a possibility that that
consequence might result;
12.
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