R v White - 1910 - Landmark Cases | My Law Tutor (2024)

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R v White - 1910 - Landmark Cases | My Law Tutor? ›

The defendant was not guilty of the murder of his mother by the poisoning of her drink as she did not ingest the poison, but for his actions she would have died, thus factual causation was not satisfied.

In R v White [1910] 2 KB 124, White gave poison to his mother who died. However, medical evidence proved that the mother had died from a heart attack and that the poison was in no way connected to the death. Therefore the defendant's behaviour did not contribute in any way to the resulting death.

Winzar v Chief Constable of Kent, The Times, 28 March 1983

They formed the opinion he was drunk so they put him in the police car, drove him to the police station and charged him with being found drunk in a highway contrary to s 12 of the Licensing Act 1872. The Divisional Court upheld his conviction.

Actus reus in assault cases typically involves a defendant intentionally or recklessly causing the victim to apprehend the immediate and unlawful infliction of force. To establish actus reus in an assault case, the prosecution must prove that: The defendant committed a voluntary act.

The chain of causation is the links that bind cause and effect together. An action causes an effect; the chain is the unbroken link between action and effect. Think of every negligence case as a chain. Each link is a single element of negligence.

For example, consider a car accident where the claimant is alleging that their injuries were caused by the defendant's negligence in speeding. In order to establish factual causation, the claimant would need to show that, but for the defendant's excessive speed, the injuries would not have occurred.

There are two types of causation in medical negligence cases: legal causation and factual causation. Legal causation is determined on the 'but for' test – but for the negligence, would the injury still have occurred? Factual causation is proving that the injury was caused by the defendant's failure.

In Rigby v Chief Constable of Northamptonshire [1985] 1 WLR 1242, a decision of Taylor J, the Chief Constable was held to be negligent where officers used CS gas without readily available fire-fighting equipment. This decision would be inconsistent with a rule that operational decisions are immune from scrutiny.

The defendant Chief Constable admits the forgery and that the officer's conduct amounts to misfeasance in a public office. He successfully contended, however, that exemplary damages are not recoverable for the tort of misfeasance by a public officer so that that part of the claim should be struck out.

R v Larsonneur (1933)

The Irish authorities made a deportation order against her, and she was forcibly removed from Ireland and returned to the UK. On arrival in England the defendant was charged under the Aliens Order 1920, with “being found” in the UK whilst not having permission to enter the country.

What does corpus delicti mean? ›

Corpus delicti is a common law Latin phrase that translates to “body of the crime.” The phrase generally refers to the principle that no one should be convicted of a crime without sufficient evidence that the crime actually occurred.

Transferred intent (or transferred mens rea, or transferred malice, in English law) is a legal doctrine that holds that, when the intention to harm one individual inadvertently causes a second person to be hurt instead, the perpetrator is still held responsible.

In order to be convicted of a crime, a defendant must have committed an "actus reus," or criminal act. Under some circ*mstances, a defendant can be convicted of committing a crime for failing to act as well (an "omission"). Either way, the basic principles of criminal law always define crimes in terms of acts.

The eggshell skull rule (or thin skull rule) describes the principle that a defendant must "take the victim as he finds them". This means that particular vulnerabilities or frailties of a victim cannot be considered when determining the liability of the defendant.

The purpose of the Fairchild exception is to provide a cause of action against a defendant who has materially increased the risk that the claimant will suffer damage and may have caused that damage, but cannot be proved to have done so because it is impossible to show, on a balance of probability, that some other ...

Contributory negligence is a common law tort rule which bars plaintiffs from recovering for the negligence of others if they too were negligent in causing the harm. Contributory negligence has been replaced in many jurisdictions with the doctrine of comparative negligence.

R v Dalloway (1847) 2 Cox 273

Facts: The defendant was driving a horse and cart down a road without holding on to the reigns. A three-year-old child ran in front of the cart and was killed. Held: The defendant was not liable as he would not have been able to stop the cart in time even if he had been holding the reins.

If a victim does something so daft or unexpected in reaction to the act of a defendant, the chain of causation will be broken by the victim's acts as they are not objectively foreseeable.

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 ...

A defendant is not liable unless their wrongful conduct in fact causes the claimant's harm. The defendant is also not liable merely because their conduct in fact caused the claimant's harm. There must be both factual and legal causation. The long accepted test of factual causation is the 'but-for' test.