This set of notes based around causation breaks down some of the key areas around the topic by providing a summary of the key rules, including cases which may prove to be useful. This set of notes should prove useful to anyone doing A Level Law as well as Law Undergraduates.
Causation
In order for a defendant to be found guilty, causation must be established. In other words, this
means that the prosecution must prove the following:
- The defendant’s conduct was the factual cause of the consequence.
- The defendant’s conduct was the legal cause of the consequence.
- There was no intervening act which broke the chain of causation.
Factual Cause
The defendant can only be guilty if the consequence would not have occurred “but for” his actions.
The “but for” test is used to establish factual causation and came from the cause of R v Pagett.
R v Pagett –
- Defendant took his pregnant girlfriend from her home by force.
- When the defendant came out of the house, he held his girlfriend in front of him and fired at
the police.
- When the police returned fire, he used his girlfriend as a human shield, meaning that she
was shot and died as a result of the police bullet.
- The defendant was convicted of manslaughter, as “but for” him using his girlfriend as a
human shield, his girlfriend would not have been killed.
R v White –
- Defendant put cyanide in his mother’s drink with the intention to kill her.
- His mother died of a heart attack before she could drink it.
- Therefore, the defendant was not the factual cause of her death and could not be charged
with murder.
- He was, however, found guilty of attempted murder.
R v Hughes –
- It was held by the Supreme Court that factual causation is not enough on its own for liability.
- They distinguished between cause in the factual “but for” sense and cause in the sense of
something that was a legally effective cause of that consequence.
Legal Causation
The general rule is that a defendant can be found guilty if his actions were more than a “minimal”
cause of the consequence.
However, the defendant’s conduct need not be a substantial cause.
Other acts contributing to the consequence may done by others other than the defendant.
In some cases, courts have stated that the conduct must be more than “de minimis”, however, this
was altered by the case of R v Kimsey.
R v Kimsey –
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