Using wrong legislation to carry out an action

Victor

If, say:

* A garda arrests a person for shop-lifting using a piece of public order legislation (no public order aspect to incident) or
* A minister invokes the wrong act when making regulations or
* A council banned the holding of markets, invoking the Cement Act, 1933.

How is the legality of the action affected? Would I have it right that the action is nullified, but that doesn't stop them correcting their error later by invoking the correct legislation.

Fred Swanson

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Peregrinus

A wrongful arrest is a wrongful arrest and you have a remedy, even if you are subsequently rightly arrested.

But note that the fact that the title of legislation contains the words "public order" or "cement" or whatever does not mean that everything which the legislation empowers or provides for must have to do with public order or cement, as the case may be. The short title is just a convenient label for referring to the instrument; it doe not summarise or limit the scope or effect of the instrument. You'd need to read and interpret the provision concerned very carefully in order to determine whether an act done under it was beyond power or not.

Victor

Peregrinus wrote: »

But note that the fact that the title of legislation contains the words "public order" or "cement" or whatever does not mean that everything which the legislation empowers or provides for must have to do with public order or cement, as the case may be. The short title is just a convenient label for referring to the instrument; it doe not summarise or limit the scope or effect of the instrument. You'd need to read and interpret the provision concerned very carefully in order to determine whether an act done under it was beyond power or not.

I take your point. I had specifically checked the Cement Act 1933.