A Fundamental Change Of Direction Is Not The Basic Fault Element For All Offences

The Civil Liabilities Act 2002 defines negligence as a failure on the part of the defendant which results in the harm of the plaintiff which could have been prevented by taking reasonable care. The breach of duty must be foreseeable, Sullivan v Moody. The risk must be not insignificant, and a reasonable person under similar circumstances would have taken precaution against the harm. In this case

A controversial aspect of the criminal justice system is the Crown’s use of discretion when it decides to make charge negotiations. This means that the crown offers the accused a lesser charge should they plead guilty to it. In doing so, the crown benefits from the assured conviction (maintaining peace and security by an efficient means) and the accused benefits from a lesser sentence. However by employing powers of discretion in this case and making a deal with offenders, is seems to be at the expense of victims as there if insufficient retribution. The case of Nannette May (2009) epitomises the concern of victims, as May was not given a chance to give evidence against her attacker due to his acceptance of a

Furthermore, throughout sentencing and punishment various legal and non-legal measures have been implemented to ensure that sentences for those convicted are appropriate and effective to enable rehabilitation and reintegration into society and provide the community with a sense of justice and security. The provision of statutory and judicial guidelines means that limits are placed on a judge’s discretion when sentencing, thus ensuring sentencing consistency. These guidelines were established in relation to the case R v. Jurisic (1998). The defendant Jurisic, pleaded guilty to three charges of dangerous driving occasioning in grievous bodily harm. He was found under the influence of cocaine on one of these charges. He was sentences to 18 months home detention, lost his driver’s licence for one year and was put on a good behaviour bond for two years. This was through to be lenient and was appealed by the DPP. The appeal was upheld and the sentence was replaced by two years imprisonment and two years disqualification of his driver’s

The court deciphering between criminal negligence and recklessness. Criminal negligence being a person failing to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.

Historically, the transferred intent doctrine has been applied to five intentional torts. The five torts are battery, assault, false imprisonment, trespass to chattel, and trespass to land. Under transferred intent, if the defendant intends any of these five torts, but her acts, instead or in addition, result in any of the other five intentional torts, the defendant is liable, even though she did not intend the other tort. The transferred intent rule may have emerged because these five torts were historically associated with a single action for trespass. The concept of trespass was not limited to the contemporary meaning of trespass to land, but embodied many types of direct injuries. It is important, consequently, Torts, is a large area of private law concerned with compensating those who have been injured by the wrongdoing of others to recognize that courts have applied the concept only to these five intentional torts. The law of torts is mainly judge-made law; courts over the centuries have defined people 's rights and obligations with respect to their fellows. These are constantly in flux and change to meet new technological and social concerns. The example for our case would be the case law of Donoghue v. Stevenson. This is one of the most important cases in English tort law history. The judges determined that each citizen has a duty of care for his or her fellow citizens where it is

Structural injustice in the criminal system can occur due to an individual’s implicit bias affecting their discretionary actions; however, the central question rests in who bears the moral responsibility of this injustice? In my opinion, individuals and sovereign institutions share the moral responsibility for the structural injustice that results when implicit bias influences discretionary actions in the criminal justice system, but the greater responsibility is vested in officials with authority who possess the capability to prevent future inequities. In support of my position, I will explore why individuals do not bear all the blame, why sovereign institutions are more accountable, and I will address the counterargument that the

As a starting note, any mention of concurrent liability should be assumed to mean concurrently liability in tort and contract. Traditionally the distinction between contract and tort was that contract concerns the improvement of the claimant 's position, whereas tort is concerned with dealing with their position worsening. There has been dispute around concurrent liability and its ambiguity has led to varying decision in cases and statute making as Taylor puts it “the basis of concurrent liability uncertain”. This essay will argue Tort has and is extending itself beyond its traditional role due to judges presumption of morality leading to the unclear concurrent liability we see today. Whilst this concurrent liability shows some

Obstructing a judge’s ability to assess the circumstances of an offence in individual cases has the potential to lead to major miscarriages of justice. This may occur in cases where the circumstances equitably demand leniency but due to their nature, legislatively fall under a disproportionate mandatory

In order to begin discussing how lawmakers can legitimately draw a line between permitted and criminal activity there are two principles which need to be defined and acknowledged, the harm principle and the offense principle. The harm principle, initially created by John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty , is heavily centred around the protection of society. According to Mill, the only sufficient reason to criminalise certain behaviours and activities is if it causes harm to members of the society or society as a whole, harm to oneself is not a strong reason to criminalise behaviours as we have a right to individual autonomy. The modern harm principle used now is Joel Feinberg’s adaptation of Mill’s ideas, he stated that ‘the need to prevent

These include, (1) if one genuinely does not perceive a risk, this should not be clearly blameworthy which is also unfair for conviction by one who perhaps acted silly; (2) this case was one of utter unfairness since it offended the interpretations of the Jury’s notion on fairness especially for convicting children, and to infer normal penalties; (3) historically, recklessness has been daunted with its criticisms, confusion and complaints by scholars, judges and practitioners which should not go unnoticed since correction in law continues to be urgently required and, (4) recklessness was misinterpreted in the Criminal Damage Act 1971, since through Caldwell-recklessness, no thought was given to youths or mentally handicapped, which showed

The Term Recklessness and How It is Currently Applied to Offences in the English Law System

It was through the R. v. Sault Ste. Marie (1978) that the court was able to establish and recognize three categories of offences; True criminal offence, which involves having the state of mind of “intent, knowledge, or recklessness”; to commit the actual crime, and “must be proved by the prosecution either as an inference from the nature of the act committed, or by additional evidence”, meaning that a complete mens rea must be included within the offence, and take full punishment for their actions. The second category that was established in the Sault Ste Marie (1978) case, was the concept of Strict Liability Offences; in which, as described as offences that don’t necessarily require the prosecution to prove an existing mens rea, “the doing of the prohibited act prima facie imports the offence, leaving it open to the accused to avoid

The Supreme Court case, R v Vollmer[8], states that the appellant was convicted of murdering his de facto partner – where evidence as to the deceased’s past violent history in a previous relationship was available at the time of trial but not relied on by defence counsel – where there was no evidence led at trial or on appeal of a history of violence between the appellant and the deceased – where the appellant sought to rely on the defences of self-defence and provocation at trial under sections 271(2), 304 and 668E(1)[9]. Where the cases R v Hajistassi[10], R v Mogg[11] and Re Knowles[12] were applied as precedent to the final decision of the case.

In this they stated that the Cunningham recklessness was acceptable and the fact that the word 'malicious ' should be replaced with the word 'reckless or wilful '. This was done because 'malicious ' was seen to be out of date and it confused the juries too much. It states that 'what is implicit in 'maliciously ' in the present law will appear explicitly as intention or recklessness in the new code. ' It also gives a definition of recklessness which is 'a person is reckless if '

The first point to note when analysing occupiers’ liability is that originally it was separate to the general principles of negligence which were outlined in Donoghue v Stevenson .The reason for this “pigeon hole approach” was that the key decision of occupiers’ liability, Indermaur v Dames was decided sixty six years prior to the landmark decision of Donoghue v Stevenson . McMahon and Binchy state the reason why it was not engulfed into general negligence, was because it “… had become too firmly entrenched by 1932 … to be swamped by another judicial cross-current” Following on from Indermaur v Dames the courts developed four distinct categories of entrant which I will now examine in turn.