An Omission As A Type Of Actus Reus

In this case a school student Bryar, from Heidelberg Technical School in Victoria suffers an injury to the right eye during class due to another student firing a blow pellet using a rubber band. This caused Bryar total loss of sight of the eye. Although majority of the class was firing blow pellets it was Mr Keyte’s responsibility as the supervising teacher to ensure the safety of each student. The jury claimed that Mr Keyte saw the class misbehaving yet had no intentions of doing anything about it. The student was successful in this trial and the appeal to full court of Supreme Court of Victoria was dismissed. The defendant then appealed to the High Court who then said that he owed Duty of Care to the student to take responsible care for his safety and in failing to discipline the class was a breach of this duty. In other words, he did not act

The tort law section that falls into this case is negligence. Negligence is made up of three elements which determine negligence and duty of care is owed in this case State of Victoria v Bryar [1970] 44 ALJR 174.

Negligence is upholding a certain leavel of care by determining if it meets the four components nessessary for a claim; duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. In this case duty was not handled correctly. Duty means you agree to take care of a health care patients. THe girls working at the Good Samaritan Home did not take proper care of the residents. Breach of duty is broken down into four categories; Misfeasance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance. In this case the breach of duty refers to nonfeasance. There was a failure to act, by no other employees bringing the ause to attention. Causation requires an injury to be due to the healthcare professionals negligence. In the case of abuse in the Good Samaritan case there was no other way the injuries could have happened. The damages refers to the injuries caused to the residents.

However, due to this idea of strict liability offences not requiring proof of fault leads to the simple moral claim of ‘is it right to punish a person who had no intent to commit a crime, and took precautions not to let anyone get harmed in any way, to still be convicted?’ This opens the argument against the use of strict liability as it suggests that no matter what the opposing says, strict liability is a criminal offence and it is not vigorously enforced. This in turn lowers the respect to law and the criminal justice system as it appears that the justice system cannot

A lack of personal responsibility can cause many problems. Not only for the person who is making the choice not to take personal responsibility but for the people around them. One such example related to law enforcement could be if an officer with a department vehicle doesn't get the

As aforementioned, Scots law does not impose criminal liability for failure to act, except in certain limited circumstances. These include both common law rules and statutory enactments. There are four instances at common law which give rise to criminal liability for failure to act, i.e., duties arising from close proximity relationships such as parent and child, voluntary assumption of responsibility, creation of dangerous situations or contractual duties . In Bone v HMA , a pregnant mother was found to be under a duty to save her child from the attacks of her violent partner . Per contra, in R v Instan and R v Stone and Dobinson the court held that when voluntarily assuming

‘The providers had failed in its legal duty to notify the Care Quality Commission of serious incidents including injuries to patients or occasions when they had gone missing.’

A person has acted negligently if he/she has departed from the conduct expected of a reasonably prudent person acting under similar circumstances. The hypothetical reasonable person provides an objective by which the conduct of others is judged. The law considers a variety of factors in determining whether a person has acted as the hypothetical reasonable person would have acted in a similar situation. These factors include the knowledge, experience, and perception of the person, the activity the person is engaging in, the physical characteristics of the person, and the circumstances surrounding the person’s actions.

’ If the conduct falls below the standard of care, then it is established that the party acted carelessly in the eyes of the law and consequently so found at fault. Negligence involves doing or failing to do something that a reasonable person in the situation would or would not have done and thus leaves the party with damage, injury or loss as a consequential result. In this particular case, the most likely outcome would be that the court would find that the standard of care was to ensure that the police were made knowledgeable of the altered bail conditions of our client, which state that he now must report to Swan Hill Police Station every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, rather than an everyday occurrence. Therefore it is reasonable to expect the State Of Victoria to abide by this established standard of

Actus Reus is the physical act of the crime why the defendant did what they did? Referring back to murder the defendant could have unlawfully kill someone if they had a bad intention but if the defendant did it for self defence then it is not classed as unlawful. Omissions as Actus Reus is killing the victim e.g. stabbing them, running them over, shooting them etc. the natural rule of omission cant actually make the defendant guilty of the act he has committed. This was told by Stephen J, a 19th century judge in the following way and I quote “A sees B drowning and is able t save him by holding out his hand. An abstains from doing so in order that B may be drowned. A has committed no offence” an omission is only agreeable for the Actus Reus, where there is a duty to act. There are four important positions in which such duty can exist.

Actus reus is the Latin term for “guilty act” and is defined as the physical element of an offense covering all acts which are not psychological, it is one of two integral elements which are needed to make up an offence the other being mens reus, when these two are paired together without any defence the resulting verdict in a court of law would be guilty.

Duty of Care - People are able to act freely, as long as their acts do not infringe on the rights of others. When a situation such as this accident occurs they neglect their duty of care. The driver of the dump truck had the duty of care to abide by the law and failed to do so by ignoring the red light.

This paper will be discussing the concept of strict liability along with the concept of absolute liability within the R. v. Sault Ste. Marie (1978). In doing so, this paper will explain how strict liability offences strike a good balance between the policy rationales for absolute liability in regulatory offences and the criminal law principle that only the morally blameworthy may be punished, and how the courts have interpreted absolute liability offence and their relationship with the Charter of Rights.

In Gregg v Scott, Mr. Malcolm Gregg (‘the claimant’), the House of Lords examined the law of negligence in the area of personal injury. In order for the claimant to have a successful claim in court, the onus to shifts to the claimant to demonstrate that a duty of care owed by the doctor, there was a breach of that duty, an injury was sustained, and the negligence on behalf of the doctor Dr. Andrew Scott (‘defendant’) was a cause of the ‘injury’. If these elements are not satisfied, the claimant may lose its entitlement to full compensation.

The law has historically been reluctant to impose a general liability for omissions as opposed to positive acts. This means that there is no general duty of care in tort to act in order to prevent harm occurring to another. In Smith v Littlewoods Organisation, Lord Goff stated clearly that “the common law does not impose liability for what are called pure omissions”. Similarly, in Yuen Kun Yeu v A-G of Hong Kong, Lord Keith stated that people can ignore their moral responsibilities to prevent harm occurring to another, even when it is easily within their power to do so. He added that it would be unthinkable for there to be “liability in negligence on the part of one who sees another about to walk over a cliff