Involuntary manslaughter - Gross Negligent Manslaughter Flashcards
What is meant by GNM?
When a person dies as a result of another and this is serious enough to make D criminally liable
Can be done by act or omission
Outline the 1st rule of GNM
Must be a duty of care, established through existing duties or by novel situations using the tort test in Robinson
What duties can exist & cases?
Doctors & patients - Adomako (contractual duty to monitor oxygen)
Acceptance of care - Stone & Dobinson (accepted care/failed to fulfil it)
Family relationships - Gibbins & Proctor
Public duty - Dytham (failed his public duty to protect V)
2nd rule for GNM
Breach of Duty
D does something the RM would not do
They are judged against the standards of the RM performing the same role
3rd element of GNM
D must cause the death of V
Goodfellow
Factual causation
‘but for’ test R v White
Legal causation
Chesire - was D more than a minimal cause of death? it must be the operating and substantial cause
Intervening acts - thin skull rule
Must take V as you find them (medical conditions, phobias)
R v Blaue - refusal to have blood transfusion did not break chain of causation
Intervening acts - medical treatment
Will only break causation where the negligent act is so overwhelming to make the original wound part of history
Jordan - D stabbed V several times. Doctor gave an injection of a substance V was allergic to, resulting in death. D was not to blame as the wound was part of history.
Intervening act - victims own act
Victims own act won’t usually break chain of causation unless its unreasonable
Roberts - Reasonably foreseeable that V would jump out of a car after being touched without consent by D
Intervening act - third party intervention
makes the situation worse if it was sufficiently independent of D’s act & foreseeable
R v Pagett - not foreseeable that the police would be a third party to break causation
4th element of GNM
The jury must decide if the D’s conduct was so bad in the circumstances that it would be grossly negligent & a crime
Adomako - D’s failure to check oxygen tube was so bad in all circumstances as to amount to a crime
5th element of GNM
Must have been a serious & obvious risk of death at the time of the breach
Broughton - NG of GNM as there was not a S&O risk of death at the time of the breach (nobody had died from the drug before)
