Regina v Montila: coming full circle on marginal notes

• Author: Bilika H. Simamra
• Position: Legislative Counsel Cayman Islands
• Pages: 260-268

REGINA v

MONTILA:

COMING FULL CIRCLE ON MARGINAL NOTES

BILIKA H. SIMAMRA*

In the recent case of Montila and

Ors

v Regina1 the House of

Lords

ruled

that marginal notes can be used in the interpretation of legislation. This article

deals with two main issues. First, it examines the extent to which this ruling

is likely, if at all, to influence attitudes of individuals involved in the drafting,

consideration and processing of legislation. Second, it points out the extent to

which the decision has re-opened a number of legal issues.

The Facts

In Montila and Ors, Counsel for the Crown submitted that it was well

settled that a side note or marginal note2 in an Act of Parliament did not

constitute a legitimate aid to the construction of the section to which it relates.

Counsel for the appellants conceded the point but the Court refused to accept

the concession. In an apparent departure from a number of previous cases, the

House of

Lords

held that a marginal note should not be excluded a priori.

The facts of the case were as follows. The appellants were each charged

with one count of converting the proceeds of drug trafficking, contrary

to section 49(2) (b) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994, and one count of

converting the proceeds of criminal conduct, contrary to section 93C(2) of

the Criminal Justice Act 1988, offences commonly called money laundering.

The question was whether it was necessary for the Crown to prove that the

property being converted was in fact the proceeds, in the case of the 1994 Act,

of drug trafficking and, in the case of the 1988 Act, of

crime.

The argument

for the Crown was that, while it had to prove that the defendants knew or

had reasonable grounds to suspect that the property being converted was the

* Legislative Counsel Cayman Islands. The views expressed in this article are personal and must not be

attributed to the Government for which I work or any person, or entiry therein.

1 [2004] UKHL 50 (25 November 2004), accessed on www.bailij.org on 24 April 2005.

2 Since 2001, these notes are no longer in the margin or on the side. They appear now in bold as headings to

each section. For convenience we will use the term 'marginal note.'