Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Most requirements for a successful actus reus require a voluntary act, or omission, for evidence of fault. There is also a requirement for a clear causation, there is no liability or fault if the defendant was not actually the sole cause of the act, this is so if there was an intervention of a third party, an unexpected natural event, or the victim's own act.
However, it does show that legal notions of causation are a complex mixture of factual causes and ideas of public policy relating to the availability of legal remedies. In R v Miller [1982] UKHL 6, the House of Lords said that a person who puts a person in a dangerous position, in that case a fire, will be criminally liable if he does not ...
R v Smith (Thomas Joseph) [1959] 2 QB 35 is an English criminal law case, dealing with causation and homicide.The court ruled that neither negligence of medical staff, nor being dropped on the way from a stretcher twice, constituted breaks in the chain of causation in murder cases.
Causation in English law concerns the legal tests of remoteness, causation and foreseeability in the tort of negligence. It is also relevant for English criminal law and English contract law . In the English law of negligence , causation proves a direct link between the defendant ’s negligence and the claimant ’s loss and damage.
An omission can be criminal if there is a statute that requires one to act. A duty of care is imposed and one is required to act when one is: under a contract (R v Pittwood [5]), has assumed care (R v Stone and Dobinson [6]), has created a dangerous situation (R v Miller [7]), or fails to perform one's official position (R v Dytham. [8]).
Conduct in the law of delict is usually divided into factual and legal causation. Factual causation is proven by a 'demonstration that the wrongful act was a causa sine qua non of the loss'. This is also known as the 'but-for' test. A successful demonstration, however, 'does not necessarily result in legal liability'.
Breaking the chain (or novus actus interveniens, literally new intervening act) refers in English law to the idea that causal connections are deemed to finish. Even if the defendant can be shown to have acted negligently, there will be no liability if some new intervening act breaks the chain of causation between that negligence and the loss or damage sustained by the claimant.
Evidence that the four-year-old victim (who did not give evidence herself) had told her mother "it was a coloured boy" was held not to be admissible (not being res gestae either) against the defendant, who was white. In R v Blastland [26] (1986) the House of Lords held in a murder case that highly self-incriminating remarks made by a third ...