Law 02 cases

Question 1

Smith v chief constable of Woking

Answer 1

Assaultwhere a man was watching a person from the window. he was liable for assault because he put the person in immediate fear.

Question 2

Tuberville v savage

Answer 2

assault’if not for the assizes, i would run you through.’ this man was not liable for assault as eventhough he said he would run the man through, he still said ‘if not for..’its pretty much the same as me saying ‘if it werent for the fact theres a policeman over there, id stab you’

Question 3

R v ireland

Answer 3

Assaultthis was where the Defendant was giving silent phone calls to the victim. he was putting the victim in immediate fear because of this. He was convicted under s.47 Offences Against the Person Act 1861. He appealed contending that silence cannot amount to an assault and that psychiatric injury is not bodily harm.His conviction was upheld. Silence can amount to an assault and psychiatric injury can amount to bodily harm.

Question 4

R v constanza

Answer 4

assaultNOT YOUR AVERAGE PSYCHO.this is the case where the defendant sent hundreds(if not thousands) of threatening letters to the victim which put them in fear of danger and in this case, it put the victim in a clinical depression.

Question 5

R v Miller

Answer 5

Omission(creating a dangerous situation)The defendant had been out drinking for the evening. He went back to the house he had been staying in and fell asleep on a mattress with a lighted cigarette in his hand. He awoke and saw that the cigarette had started a small fire. Upon seeing the fire, he then got up and went to another room and went back to sleep. At his trial, the prosecution did not rely on the acts of the defendant in falling asleep with a lighted cigarette as being reckless, but relied solely on the grounds that upon becoming aware of the fire he failed to take steps to put the fire out or call the fire brigade.

Question 6

R v Lamb

Answer 6

Two boys were playing with a revolver. There were two bullets in the chamber but neither were opposite the barrel. The two boys believed that this meant it would not fire. One of the boys pointed the gun at the other and fired. As he pulled the trigger the chamber turned and the gun went off killing the boy. The other was charged with unlawful act manslaughter.

Held:

There was no unlawful act as no assault had been committed as the victim did not believe the gun would go off therefore he did not apprehend immediate unlawful personal violence.

Question 7

Logdon V DPP

Answer 7

The defendant pointed an imitation gun at a woman in jest. She was terrified. The defendant then told her it wasn’t real.

Held:

An assault had been committed as the victim had apprehended immediate unlawful personal violence and the defendant was reckless as to whether she would apprehend such violence.

Question 8

R v Meade and belt

Answer 8

The defendants surrounded the victim’s house singing threatening and menacing songs.

Held:

No assault was committed.

Holroyd J “no words or singing are equivalent to an assault”

Question 9

R v wilson

Answer 9

contradicted meade and belt 1823 and stated that words can amount to an assault

Question 10

DPP V K

Answer 10

15 year old school boy took some acid from a science lesson. He placed it into a hot air hand drier in the boys’ toilets. Another pupil came into the toilet and used the hand drier. The nozzle was pointing upwards and acid was squirted into his face causing permanent scars. The defendant was charged under s.47 OAPA 1867.

Held:

The application of force need not be directly applied. The defendant was also convicted under Caldwell recklessness (this aspect of the case has since been overruled.)

Question 11

Fagan v MPC

Answer 11

A policeman was directing the defendant to park his car. The defendant accidentally drove onto the policeman’s foot. The policeman shouted at him to get off. The defendant refused to move. The defendant argued at the time of the actus reus, the driving onto the foot, he lacked the mens rea of any offence since it was purely accidental. When he formed the mens rea, he lacked the actus reus as he did nothing.

Question 12

Collins V Willcock

Answer 12

A police woman took hold of a woman’s arm to stop her walking off when she was questioning her. The woman scratched the police woman and was charged with assaulting a police officer in the course of her duty.

Held:

The police woman’s actions amounted to a battery. The defendant’s action was therefore in self defence and her conviction was quashed.

Question 13

DPP v Santana-bermudez

Answer 13

D injured a woman police officer by allowing her to search him, knowing he had hypodermic needles in his pockets which stabbed her. D denied having any needles or sharps when asked.

D was convicted by the Magistrates, but acquitted at Crown Court. On appeal by way of case stated from the Crown Court, prosecutor’s appeal was allowed.

Held: Where someone created a danger and thereby exposed another to a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury, there was an evidential basis for the actus reus of an assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

D had “created a danger by an act … that act was a continuing act”. The risk of injury was foreseeable.

Not guilty but would be now

Question 14

DPP v Majewski

Answer 14

The appellant had taken a substantial quantity of drugs over a 48 hour period. He then went to a pub and had a drink. He got into a fight with two others. The landlord went to break up the fight and the appellant attacked him. When the police arrived, he assaulted the arresting officer. Another officer was struck by the appellant when he was being driven to the police station. The next morning he attacked a police inspector in his cell. He was charged with four counts of occasioning actual bodily harm and three counts of assaulting a police constable in the execution of his duty. The appellant claimed he had no recollection of the events due to his intoxication. He was found guilty on all counts and appealed contending that he could not be convicted when he lacked the mens rea of the offences due to his intoxicated state.

Held:

Appeal dismissed. Conviction upheld. The crime was one of basic intent and therefore his intoxication could not be relied on as a defence.

Question 15

Roberts

Answer 15

A young woman aged 21 accepted a lift from the defendant at a party to take her to another party. She had not met the man before and it was 3.00 am. The defendant drove in a different direction to where he told her he was taking her and then stopped in a remote place and started making sexual advances towards her. She refused his advances and he drove off at speed. He then started making further advances whilst driving and she jumped out of the moving car to escape him. She suffered from concussion and cuts and bruises. The defendant was convicted of actual bodily harm under s.47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. He appealed contending that he did not intend or foresee a risk of her suffering actual bodily harm from his actions and that he did not foresee the possibility of her jumping out of the car and therefore her actions amounted to a novus actus interveniens.

Held:

There is no need to establish an intention or recklessness as to the level of force under s.47. It is sufficient to establish that the defendant had intention or was reckless as to the assault or battery.

Where the victim’s actions were a natural result of the defendant’s actions it matters not whether the defendant could foresee the result. Only where the victim’s actions were so daft or unexpected that no reasonable man could have expected it would there be a break in the chain of causation.

Question 16

R v Savage

Answer 16

The defendant threw a pint of beer over the victim in a pub. The glass slipped out of her hand and smashed and cut the victim’s wrist. The victim was her husband’s ex girlfriend and there had been bad feeling between the two. The defendant maintained that it was never her intention to throw the glass just to humiliate her by throwing the beer. The trial judge directed the jury that malicious meant that an unlawful act was deliberate and aimed against the victim and resulted in the wound. The jury convicted and the appellant appealed. The Court of Appeal held this was a mis-direction as it did not correctly state that malicious included recklessness and this is decided subjectively. The Court of Appeal substituted a conviction of ABH under s.47 OAPA 1861 and certified a point of law to the House of Lords as to whether it was necessary under s.20 to establish that the defendant intended or was reckless as to the infliction of GBH or whether it was sufficient that the defendant foresaw some harm.

Held:

It was not necessary to demonstrate the defendant had the mens rea in relation to level of harm inflicted. It was sufficient that they intended or could foresee that some harm will result.

Question 17

R v Eisenhower

Answer 17

D shot V with an air gun. The pellet hit V near the eye, resulting in a bruise below the eyebrow and fluid filling the front of his eye.

Held: A wound is a break in the continuity of the whole skin; an internal rupturing of the blood vessels is not a wound.

Question 18

R v Smith

Answer 18

The defendant, a soldier, got in a fight at an army barracks and stabbed another soldier. The injured soldier was taken to the medics but was dropped twice on route. Once there the treatment given was described as palpably wrong. They failed to diagnose that his lung had been punctured. The soldier died. The defendant was convicted of murder and appealed contending that if the victim had received the correct medical treatment he would not have died.

Held:

The stab wound was an operating cause of death and therefore the conviction was upheld.

Question 19

R v Saunders

Answer 19

The defendant gave his wife an apple which he had poisoned with arsenic. He wanted to kill her so that he could marry another. The wife took a bite from the apple then gave it to their daughter. The daughter died.

Held:

The defendant was liable for the murder of his daughter. His intention to kill his wife was transferred to the daughter.

Question 20

R v Blaue

Answer 20

The defendant stabbed an 18 year old girl four times when she refused to have sexual intercourse with him. She was a practising Jehovah’s witness and refused to have a blood transfusion which would have saved her life. The defendant was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and appealed arguing that the girl’s refusal to accept the blood transfusion was a novus actus interveniens breaking the chain of causation, alternatively that Holland was no longer good law.

Held:

The defendant’s conviction was upheld. The wound was still an operative cause of death (following R v Smith & R v Jordan) so no novus actus interveniens and Holland was still good law.

Question 21

R v Cheshire

Answer 21

D shot V in an argument in a chip shop, and V was taken to hospital where a tracheotomy was performed. Six weeks later, V suffered breathing problems because of the tracheotomy scar and died. The hospital had been negligent - perhaps even reckless - in not recognising the likely cause of V’s problems and responding to them.

Held: This did not break the chain of causation from the shooting. D’s actions need not be the sole or even the main cause of death as long as they contributed significantly to that result; medical negligence did not exclude D’s liability unless it was so independent of his acts and so potent as to make his own contribution insignificant. Only in the most extraordinary and unusual case would treatment, whether right or wrong, given in good faith by a generally competent doctor, be regarded as independent of the original injury.

Question 22

R v Jordan

Answer 22

^[Causation - medical treatment not novus actus inteveniens – unless medical treatment palpably wrong]
D stabbed V, and V died from bronchopneumonia in hospital about a week later. New evidence not available at the trial indicated that the bronchopneumonia was probably caused by B’s unusual reaction to terramycin (which had been given even after his allergy had been discovered) and/or by an excess dose of intravenous fluids.

Held: The medical treatment was ‘palpably wrong’ and would have ‘precluded’ a jury from holding that death was caused by D’s action.

Question 23

California V lewis

Answer 23

[Causation - death occurring from V’s own actions do not break causation]
D shot his brother-in-law, inflicting a wound which would have proved fatal within a relatively short period. However, the victim shortly thereafter cut his own throat, thus further hastening his death.

Held: D’s shooting was an “operative and substantial cause” of death.

Guilty manslaughter

Question 24

r v Paggett

Answer 24

The appellant aged 31 had separated from his wife and formed a relationship with a 16 year old girl. She became pregnant. She finished the relationship when she was six months pregnant because he was violent towards her. He did not take the break up well and drove to her parents house armed with a shotgun. He shot the father in the leg and took the mother at gunpoint and demanded she took him to where her daughter was. When there, after various threatening and violent behaviour, he then took the girl. He drove off with the mother and daughter. The police caught up with him and he kicked the mother out of the car and drove off with the daughter. He took her to a flat and kept her hostage. Armed police followed him. He used the girl as a shield as he came out of the flat and walked along the balcony. The police saw a figure walking towards them but could not see who it was. The appellant fired shots at the police and the police returned fire. The police shot the girl who died. The appellant was convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, kidnap of the mother and daughter, attempted murder on the father and two police officers and the manslaughter of the girl. He appealed against the manslaughter conviction on the issue of causation.

Held:

Conviction upheld. The firing at the police officers caused them to fire back. In firing back the police officers were acting in self -defence. His using the girl as a shield caused her death.

Question 25

r v Pittwood

Answer 25

The defendant was employed by a railway company to man the gate at a level crossing. The defendant lifted the gate to allow a cart to pass and then went off to lunch failing to put it back down. A train later collided with a horse and cart killing the train driver. The defendant was liable for the death of the train driver as it was his contractual duty to close the gate.

Question 26

DPP v Smith

Answer 26

The defendant’s ex-girlfriend went round to his house whilst he was asleep in bed. She went up to his bedroom and woke him up. He pushed her down on to the bed, sat on top of her and cut off her hair which was in a pony tail. He did not physically cause any harm to her, other than the cutting of the hair. She sustained no bruises, scratches or cuts. Whilst she was emotionally upset and distressed by the experience there was no evidence or suggestion of psychiatric injury. The defendant was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm under s.47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The Magistrates accepted that a common assault had been committed, however the defendant had not been charged with assault. The Magistrates held that there was no case to answer in relation to the charge under s.47, as cutting of hair itself did not constitute ABH. The prosecution appealed.

Held:

The cutting of hair did amount to actual bodily harm.

Question 27

R v Wilson

Answer 27

The appellant branded his initials on his wife’s buttocks with a hot knife. She had asked him to do so. Her skin became infected and she sought medical treatment from her doctor. The doctor reported the matter to the police and the husband was charged with ABH under s.47 Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

Held:

The wife’s consent was valid. The branding was more akin to tattooing and cosmetic enhancement rather than infliction of pain for sexual gratification. The court further held that consensual activity between husband and wife in the privacy of the matrimonial home was not a matter for the courts.

Question 28

R v Venna

Answer 28

this case provided the accepted definition of assault ‘the intentional or reckless causing of an apprehension of immediate unlawful personal violence’.