Judgment
Ordinarily, the circumstances and medical treatment following serious bodily harm are not relevant in establishing a defendant's liability for his acts. Where the original wound or injury caused by the defendant is still an 'operating cause' of death, negligent medical treatment will not constitute a novus actus interveniens. [lower-alpha 1]
However, in the judgment of Hallett J, acting as a judge of the Court of Appeal, it was conceded that the death of the victim was not "consequent upon the wound inflicted." [2] Hallett summed up the fresh medical evidence as such:
The stab wound had penetrated the intestine in two places, but it was mainly healed at the time of death. With a view to preventing infection it was thought right to administer an antibiotic, terramycin. It was agreed by the two additional witnesses that, that was the proper course to take, and a proper dose was administered. Some people, however, are intolerant to terramycin, and Beaumont was one of those people. After the initial doses he developed diarrhoea, which was only properly attributable, in the opinion of those doctors, to the fact that the patient was intolerant to terramycin. Thereupon the administration of terramycin was stopped, but unfortunately the very next day the resumption of such administration was ordered by another doctor and it was recommenced the following day. The two doctors both take the same view about it. Dr. Simpson said that to introduce a poisonous substance after the intolerance of the patient was shown was palpably wrong. Mr. Blackburn agreed. [3]
The Court took the view that based on these facts – and that the original stab wound had healed – a reasonable jury would not be satisfied that the defendant's acts had been the material cause of the victim's death. As such, the conviction was quashed. [4]
The defendant was not liable because the original wound's healing was quite well-advanced and set to heal with negligible risk of death, then further medical treatment was 'palpably wrong' thus breaking the link between the defendant's act and the victim's death.
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Assault occasioning grievous bodily harm is a term used in English criminal law to describe the severest forms of battery. It refers to two offences that are created by sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The distinction between these two sections is the requirement of specific intent for section 18; the offence under section 18 is variously referred to as "wounding with intent" or "causing grievous bodily harm with intent", whereas the offence under section 20 is variously referred to as "unlawful wounding", "malicious wounding" or "inflicting grievous bodily harm".
Assault occasioning actual bodily harm is a statutory offence of aggravated assault in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Hong Kong and the Solomon Islands. It has been abolished in the Republic of Ireland and in South Australia, but replaced with a similar offence.
Causation is the "causal relationship between the defendant's conduct and end result". In other words, causation provides a means of connecting conduct with a resulting effect, typically an injury. In criminal law, it is defined as the actus reus from which the specific injury or other effect arose and is combined with mens rea to comprise the elements of guilt. Causation only applies where a result has been achieved and therefore is immaterial with regard to inchoate offenses.
Common assault is an offence in English law. It is committed by a person who causes another person to apprehend the immediate use of unlawful violence by the defendant. In England and Wales, the penalty and mode of trial for this offence is provided by section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
In criminal law, consent may be used as an excuse and prevent the defendant from incurring liability for what was done.
Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
R v Blaue (1975) 61 Cr App R 271 is an English criminal law appeal in which the Court of Appeal decided, being a court of binding precedent thus established, that the refusal of a Jehovah's Witness to accept a blood transfusion after being stabbed did not constitute an intervening act for the purposes of legal causation. This upheld the decision of Mocatta J. in the court below, Teesside Crown Court.
R v Holland (1841) is a general-principle English criminal law decision as to novus actus interveniens — breaking the chain of causation. It confirmed the rarity of scenarios that will break the chain when serious, intentional bodily harm is carried out.
R v Cheshire [1991] 1 WLR 844 is an English criminal law case establishing the role of the jury in finding liability for death, where subsequent medical negligence occurs following the original injury. The Court of Appeal found that the jury did not have to weigh up different causes of death, and need only be satisfied that the defendant's actions made a "significant contribution" to the victim's death.
English criminal law concerns offences, their prevention and the consequences, in England and Wales. Criminal conduct is considered to be a wrong against the whole of a community, rather than just the private individuals affected. The state, in addition to certain international organisations, has responsibility for crime prevention, for bringing the culprits to justice, and for dealing with convicted offenders. The police, the criminal courts and prisons are all publicly funded services, though the main focus of criminal law concerns the role of the courts, how they apply criminal statutes and common law, and why some forms of behaviour are considered criminal. The fundamentals of a crime are a guilty act and a guilty mental state. The traditional view is that moral culpability requires that a defendant should have recognised or intended that they were acting wrongly, although in modern regulation a large number of offences relating to road traffic, environmental damage, financial services and corporations, create strict liability that can be proven simply by the guilty act.
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law is established by statute, which is to say that the laws are enacted by a legislature. Criminal law includes the punishment and rehabilitation of people who violate such laws.
Landeros v. Flood was a 1976 court case in the state of California involving child abuse and alleged medical malpractice.
The eggshell rule is a well-established legal doctrine in common law, used in some tort law systems, with a similar doctrine applicable to criminal law. The rule states that, in a tort case, the unexpected frailty of the injured person is not a valid defense to the seriousness of any injury caused to them.
Non-fatal offences against the person, under English law, are generally taken to mean offences which take the form of an attack directed at another person, that do not result in the death of any person. Such offences where death occurs are considered homicide, whilst sexual offences are generally considered separately, since they differ substantially from other offences against the person in theoretical basis and composition. Non-fatal offences against the person mainly derive from the Offences against the Person Act 1861, although no definition of assault or battery is given there.
English law contains homicide offences – those acts involving the death of another person. For a crime to be considered homicide, it must take place after the victim's legally recognised birth, and before their legal death. There is also the usually uncontroversial requirement that the victim be under the "Queen's peace". The death must be causally linked to the actions of the defendant. Since the abolition of the year and a day rule, there is no maximum time period between any act being committed and the victim's death, so long as the former caused the latter.
South African criminal law is the body of national law relating to crime in South Africa. In the definition of Van der Walt et al., a crime is "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted." Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.
In S v Counter, an important case in South African criminal law, the appellant had shot the deceased, lodging a bullet in her buttock. Unbeknownst either to her or to her doctors, the bullet had penetrated her anal canal, causing virulent septicaemia and leading to the pneumonia from which she died two weeks later. It fell to the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa to decide whether it was the shot fired or rather medical negligence which had caused the death:
The sequence of events from the time of the deceased's admission [to hospital] until her death was not interrupted by any causal factor which affected or changed the natural order of events, more particularly there was no intervention or omission by the persons responsible for her care [...]. It is inconceivable in these circumstances that the appellant should not be held responsible for the consequences of his actions, which led directly to his wife's death by stages entirely predictable and in accordance with human experience.
Chapman v Hearse is a significant case in common law related to duty of care, reasonable foreseeability and novus actus interveniens within the tort of negligence. The case concerned three parties; Chapman who drove negligently, Dr Cherry who assisted him on the side of the road, and Hearse who, in driving negligently, killed Dr Cherry while he was assisting Chapman. In the Supreme Court of South Australia, Hearse was found liable for damages to Dr Cherry's estate under the Wrongs Act 1936. Hearse sought to reclaim damages from Chapman due to his alleged contributory negligence; Chapman was found liable to one quarter of the damages. Chapman appealed the case to the High Court of Australia on August 8, 1961, but it was dismissed as the results of his negligence were deemed reasonably foreseeable. A duty of care was established between Chapman and the deceased and his claim of novus actus interveniens was rejected. Dr Cherry was considered a 'rescuer' and his respective rights remained.
