Lecture notes
Causation Lecture notes (Criminal Law)
- Module
- Criminal Law
- Institution
- Queen Mary, University Of London (QMUL)
Lecture notes - Criminal law Causation (2nd year LLB Law)
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Tuesday, 15 October 20194. Causation
- The actus reus of “result crimes” include specified results
E.g. Murder or manslaughter require a resulting death
E.g. s.47 OAPA requires actual bodily harm
- These offences require that D caused that result
- Not normally an issue unless something odd happens and/or there appear to be more than
one cause
- The rule of thumb - D will normally be responsible where his wrongful conduct propels a
causal sequence that results in a harm which otherwise wouldn’t have happened, unless
something else happens to make it unfair to consider D’s conduct a legal cause.
- Consider the “chain of causation” :
- Chain of causation - Series of events or factors linking the defendants conduct with
the eventual result
- Causation - two requirements
1. The defendants conduct must be the factual cause of the result
2. The defendants conduct must be the legal cause of the result (i.e. there must b can
appropriate moral connection between conduct and result)
Factual Causation
- The “but for” test - if the result would not have happened but for the defendants conduct,
they are a factual cause of that result. (i.e if it might have happened anyway, the
prosecution will fail)
- R v White - mother and son, son who wants to get inheritance early and decides to poison
mothers milk. Mom dies of a heart attack before poison. He was found not guilty bc the
result was independent of the poison.
- R v Morby - religious sect “The Peculiar people”, father and son. Son came down with
smallpox, dad did not believe in medicine and thought prayer would save him. He was
wrong and father died. Prosecution failed bc could not prove that no medicine triggered
the death, would have died anyways.
- Can be an act of omission and there can be more than one cause.
- Benge - Forman was hired to oversee section of railway track, misread timetable of train
and people died. Argued there were other factors. You have to be a factual cause not the
sole factual cause.
- Only wrongful conduct can start a chain of causation
1
, Tuesday, 15 October 2019
- Hughes - D charged with causing death by driving while not having a license or insurance.
He was driving along perfectly. As he was driving, a car crossed into D’s lane high on
heroin, and died. D was charged, could his driving be seen as the cause of the accident?
Court held that there must be blameworthy that caused the death, not mere fact of driving
on the road.
- Dalloway - Man was driving his horse and cart and wasn’t holding onto the reins. Cart
crossed and died. Held that even by holding the reins the death would have occurred.
- Not necessary that D’s conduct starts the process leading to the result – it is enough to
accelerate it
- Dyson - Man struck a child in the head and died. Turns out child had meningitis and would
have died soon. Enough for the court, said that he accelerated that death.
- Casual connection can be indirect
- Mitchell - Parties involved were in a line at post office, argument about line skipping,D
punched a man standing in line with him, fell over on an old lady and suffered injuries and
died.
Legal Causation
- “Causation is a complex area of the law where the search for a comprehensive test of
causation or set of principles has proved to be elusive. The difficulty stems no doubt from
the vast array of circumstances in which issues of causation can arise and from the fact…
that considerations of policy and value judgments necessarily enter into the assessment of
causation.”
- If D’s wrongful conduct is a factual cause, it will usually be considered the legal cause
unless it would be inappropriate to attribute that harm to D
- The “substantial and operative cause” test: at the time of the result, was D’s conduct a
substantial and operative cause?
- R v Smith - D was soldier and attacked fellow soldiers in the berets and ended up stabbing
them in the back. C ended up with a pierced lung, carried to medical tent and was dropped
by the friends and dropped him again. He gets to the medical tent, very busy and doctor
doesn’t realise he has pierced lung, he puts him on artificial respiration and dies. Thought
he would have lived without all the other factors. D argued he was not the legal cause bc of
other considerations. The death is result of wound even if other considerations. Only if the
second cause is so overwhelming that it makes the first cause history. The question is
whether or no the result is so remote with a moral conduct to make the defendant
responsible.
- Third parties
- Third parties contributing to the result will not break the chain of causation if D’s act is
still a substantial and operative cause
- People v Clark - Appeal against manslaughter conviction. D had attacked victim and sent
to hospital. Mom of victim wanted to bring him home, doctors told him it was bad idea
and she did it anyways. He died. It was D’s fault.
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