Causation

Question 1

What are result crimes and what do they require?

Answer 1

Result crimes include murder, manslaughter, criminal damage and assault occasioning ABH - they require D’s conduct to cause a particular result.

Question 2

What are the two aspects to causation for Result Crimes.

Answer 2

1) Factual Causation: jury must be satisfied that the act/omission of D were in fact the cause of the consequence

2) Legal Causation: must be established that the acts/omissions of D were a legal cause of that consequence

Both must be proved by prosecution

Question 3

Factual causation?

Answer 3

The ‘but for’ test:

• factually it must be proven that but for D’s act/omission, the consequence would not have occurred in the way that it did (R v White)

R v Dyson shows that any action which accelerates death is a cause

Question 4

Legal Causation?

Answer 4

• Law will require D to be the “operating and substantial” cause of the prohibited consequence (R v Pagett)

The key legal causation principles are:
- D’s act must be the substantial cause of the prohibited harm (“more than minimal” - R v Hughes
- Consequence must have been caused by D’s culpable act
- D’s act need not be the one cause of the prohibited consequence

Question 5

What are intervening acts?

Answer 5

Subsequent event or act, either by victim or a third party which renders the defendant’s part in the consequence very small, breaking the chain of causation, allowing D to avoid criminal liability.

These events include:
- Medical negligence
- Acts of third party
- Acts of victim
- Thin skull rule
- Natural event

Question 6

Medical negligence?

Answer 6

Courts are reluctant to allow medical negligence to break chain of causation.

In Cheshire, the courts argued that for medial negligence to have broke chain of causation, the “negligent treatment was so independent of his acts, and in itself so potent in causing death”

Question 7

Acts of third party?

Answer 7

Held by CoA that there can only be a break in chain of causation if actions of third party were “free, deliberate and informed”

Question 8

Acts of victims?

Answer 8

Three types of acts of victims:
1) Fright or Flight: in moments where V may attempt to escape from threat, to break causation the question is whether reasonable person at time of D’s act would have foreseen the escape, if not, chain of causation is broken

2) Refusing medical treatment:
3) Suicide: victim’s choice to die and the actions of the doctors in helping him were free, voluntary informed acts which broke the chain of causation.

Question 9

Natural events?

Answer 9

Will only break chain of causation if they are ‘extraordinary and not reasonably foreseeable’

Question 10

Thin skull rule?

Answer 10

Idea that a person who inflicts harm on another cannot escape liability if the victim, owing to some pre-existing peculiarity, suffers greater harm than would have been expected as a result of what the accused has done.
Take V as you find them