9779642
| Question | Answer |
| Nelson 2013 | The Court of Appeal stated that 'What is required for common assault is for D to have done something of a physical kind which causes someone else to apprehend that they are about to be struck' |
| Constanza 1997 | Letters can be an assault. D had written 800 letters and made a number of phone calls to V. V interpreted the last two letters as clear threats. There was a clear 'fear of violence' at some time, not excluding the immediate future. |
| Ireland 1997 | Silent phone calls can be an assault |
| Lamb 1967 | Pointing an unloaded gun at someone who knows it is unloaded cannot amount to an assault. The other person does not fear immediate force. However, if the other person thought the gun was loaded then this could be an assault. |
| Smith v Chief Superintendent of Woking Police Station 1983 | Fear of immediate force is necessary; immediate does not mean instantaneous, but 'imminent', so an assault can be through a closed window. D broke into a garden and looked through V's bedroom window on the ground floor at about 11pm one evening. V was terrified and thought that D was about to enter the room. Although D was outside the house and no attack could be made at that immediate moment, the court held that V was frightened by his conduct. The basis of the fear was that she did not know what he was going to do next, but that it was likely to be of a violent nature. Fear if what he might do next was sufficiently immediate for the purposes of the offence. |
| Tuberville v Savage 1669 | Words indicating that there will be no violence may prevent an act from being an assault. D placed one hand on his sword and said 'if it were not assize time, I would not take such language from you'. This was held not to be an assault, because what he said showed he was not going to do anything. |
| Light 1857 | D raised a sword above his head of his wife and said 'Were it not for the bloody policeman outside, I would split your head open'. It was held that this was an assault. The wife feared that force was going to be used on her and the words in the circumstances were not enough to negate that fear. |
| Collins v Wilcock 1984 | The AR of battery is the application of unlawful force to another person. Force is misleading this can include the slightest touching. Two police officers saw two women apparently soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. They asked the appellant to get into the police car for questioning but she refused and walked away. As she was not known to the police, one of the officers walked after her to try to find out her identity. She refused to speak to the officer and again walked away. The officer then took hold of her by the arm to prevent her from leaving. She became abusive and scratched the officer's arm. She was convicted of assaulting a police in the execution of his duty. She appealed against that conviction on the basis that the officer was not acting in the execution of his duty, but was acting unlawfully by holding her arm as the officer was not arresting her. The Court held that the officer had committed a battery and D was entitled to free herself. |
| Wood (Fraser) v DPP 2008 | The police had received a report that a man named Fraser had thrown an ashtray at another person in a public house. The ashtray had missed the person but had been smashed. Three police officers went to the scene. They saw a man (W) who fitted the description of 'Fraser' leave the public house. One of the police officers took hold of W by the arm and asked if he was Fraser. W denied this and struggled trying to pull away. W was charged with assaulting two of the police officers while they were acting in the execution of their duty. The police officer who had first caught hold of W's arm said that he had done this in order to detain W, but was not at that point arresting him. It was held that as the officer had not arrested W, there was a battery by the police officers. This meant that W was entitled to struggle and was not guilty of any offence of assault against the police. |
| Thomas 1985 | Even touching the victim's clothing can be sufficient to form a battery. D touched the bottom of a woman's skirt and rubbed it. The Court of Appeal said, obiter, that there could be no dispute that if you touch a persons clothes while he is wearing them that is equivalent to touching him. |
| Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner 1968 | A battery may be committed through a continuing act. D parked his car with one of the tyres on a police officer's foot. When he parked he was unaware that he had done this, but then the police officer asked him to remove it, he refused to do so for several minutes. The Court said that at the start there was an act which could be a battery but the full offence of battery was not committed at that point because there was no element of intention. However, it became an offence of battery the moment the intention was formed to eave the wheel on the officer's foot. |
| Martin 1881 | A battery can be committed through an indirect act. D placed an iron bar across the doorway of a theatre. He then switched off the lights. In the panic which followed several of the audience were injured when they were trapped and unable to open the door. Martin was convicted of an offence under s.20 OAPA 1861. |
| DPP v K 1990 | An indirect can be committed through an indirect act - a more modern example. D was a 15-year-old boy who took sulphuric acid without permission from his science lesson, to try its reaction on some toilet paper. While he was in the toilet he heard footsteps in the corridor, panicked and put the acid into a hot-air hand drier to hide it. He retuned to his class intending to remove the acid later. Before he could do so another pupil used the drier and was sprayed by the acid. D was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm (s.47). The Magistrates acquitted him because he said he had not intended to hurt anyone. The prosecution appealed, by way of case stated, to the Queen's Bench Divisional Court which held that a common assault could be committed by an indirect act. |
| Haystead v Chief Constable of Derbyshire 2000 | D caused a small child to fall to the floor by punching the woman holding the child. D was found guilty because he was reckless as to whether not not his acts would injure the child. *Note - the conviction in this case can also be justified under the doctrine of transferred malice. |
| DPP v Santa-Bermudez 2003 | Criminal liability for battery can arise by way of an omission but only if D is under a duty to act. A policewoman, before searching D's pockets, asked him if he had any needles or other sharp objects on him. D said 'no', but when the police officer put her hand in his pocket she was injured by a needle which caused bleeding. The Divisional Court held that D's failure to tell her of the needle could amount to the AR for the purposes of an assault causing ABH. |
| Miller 1983 | An omission can lead to a battery if D has created a dangerous situation. D accidentally set fire to his mattress but failed to do anything to prevent damage to the building in which he was sleeping. He was convicted of arson. Had anyone been injured in the fire, depending on the level of injury, D could have also been liable for battery. |
| A v UK 1998 | Force may be lawful in the correction of a child. English Law recognises that moderate and reasonable physical chastisement of a child is lawful. In this case a jury had acquitted a father who has beaten his son with a garden cane. The European Court of Human Rights however ruled that a law allowing force to be used on a child offends Article 3 of the European Convention of Human rights which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The Children Act 2004 now provides that a battery committed on a child is unlawful if it results in any injury. |
| Miller 1954 | Actual bodily harm was defined as: 'any hurt or injury calculated to interfere with the health or comfort of the victim' |
| T v DPP 2003 | Loss of consciousness, even momentarily, can constitute ABH. D and a group of other youths chased V. V fell to the ground and saw D coming towards him. V covered his head with his arms and was kicked. He momentarily lost consciousness and remembered nothing until being woken by a police officer. D was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. |
| DPP v Smith (Michael) 2006 | Cutting V's hair can amount to ABH. D had had an argument with his girlfriend. He cut off her ponytail and some hair from the top of her head without her consent. He was charged with an offence under s.47 OAPA 1861 and convicted on appeal by the prosecution. Physical pain is not necessary for ABH but a substantial amount of hair must be cut off for the harm to be 'actual'. |
| Chan Fook 1994 | Psychiatric harm is also classed as 'ABH' However, it does not include mere emotions such as fear, distress or panic, nor does it include states of mind that are not themselves evidence of some identifiable clinical condition. |
| Burstow 1997 | Approved and affirmed the decision in Chan Fook. Bodily harm must be interpreted to include recognised psychiatric illness. |
| Roberts 1971 | MR of Assault occasioning ABH is intention or recklessness as to whether V fears or is subjected to force but there is no need for D to intend or be reckless as to whether ABH is caused. D, who was driving a car, made advances to the girl in the passenger seat and tried to take her coat off. She feared that he was going to commit a more serious assault and jumped from the car while it was travelling at about 30 miles per hour. As a result of this she was slightly injured. D was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm even though he had not intended any injury or realised there was a risk of injury. He had intended to apply unlawful force when he touched her as he tried to take her coat off. This satisfied the mens rea for a common assault and so he was guilty of an offence under s.47 |
| R v Savage 1991 and R v Parmenter 1991 (Joint appeals) | Confirmed the decision in Roberts 1971. D threw beer over another woman in a pub. In doing this the glass slipped from D's hand and V's had was cut by the glass. D said that she had only intended to throw the beer over the woman, D had not intended her to be injured, nor had she realised that there was a risk of injury. She was convicted of a s.20 offence but the Court of Appeal quashed that and substituted a conviction under s.47 OAPA 1861. She appealed against this to the House of lords but they dismissed her appeal. The fact that she intended to throw the beer over the other woman meant she had the intention to apply unlawful force and this was sufficient for the MR of s.47. |
| JJC v Eisenhower 1983 | A wound means a 'cut or break in the continuity of the whole skin'. A cut of internal skin, such as the cheek, is sufficient, but internal bleeding where there is no cut of the skin is not sufficient. V was hit in the eye by a shotgun pellet. This did not penetrate the eye but did cause severe bleeding under the surface. As there was no cut, it was held that this was not a wound. |
| Wood 1830 | A broken bone is not considered a wound unless the skin is broken as well. V's collar bone was broken but, as the skin was intact, it was held there was no wound. |
| DPP v Smith 1961 | It was held that grievous bodily harm means 'really serious harm'. The harm does not have to be life-threatening. |
| Saunders 1985 | It is permissible to direct a jury that there need to be 'serious harm' not including the word 'really' |
| Bollom 2004 | The severity of the injuries should be assessed according to the victim's age and health. A 17-month-old child had bruising to her abdomen, both arms and left leg. D was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction and substituted a conviction for ABH though they did say that bruising could amount to grievous bodily harm. |
| Burstow 1997 | Serious psychiatric injury can be grievous bodily harm. The victim of a stalker suffered a severe depressive illness as a result of D's conduct. |
| Dica 2004 | First ever conviction for causing grievous bodily harm through infecting victims with the HIV virus. D had had unprotected sex with two women without telling them he was HIV-positive. Both women became infected as a result. Although on appeal D's conviction was quashed on the question of consent and the case sent for re-trial, there was no doubt that infecting someone with HIV was inflicting GBH. At his re-trial he was convicted. |
| Lewis 1974 | s.20 uses the word inflict and originally this was taken to mean a technical assault or battery. This allowed the section to be interpreted widely. D shouted threats at his wife through a closed door in a second-floor flat and tried to break his way through the door. The wife was so frightened that she jumped from the window and broke both her legs. D was convicted of a s.20 offence. |
| Burstow 1997 | 'Inflict' does not require a technical assault or a battery. D carried out an eight-month campaign of harassment against a woman with whom he had had a brief relationship some three years earlier. The harassment consisted of both silent and abusive telephone calls, hate mail and stalking. This caused V to suffer from severe depression. D's conviction under s.20 OAPA 1861 was upheld by the House of Lords. |
| Cunningham 1957 | 'Maliciously' does not require any ill will towards the person injured. It simply means either: a) an intention to do the particular kind of harm that was in fact done or b) recklessness as to whether such harm should occur or not |
| Parmenter 1991 | The House of Lords confirmed that the Cunningham meaning of recklessness applies to all offences in which the statutory definition uses the word 'maliciously'. However, for s.20 OAPA 1861, there is no need to foresee that level of serious injury. |
| Taylor 2009 | For the MR of s.18 an intention to wound is not enough. V was found with scratches across his face and a stab wound in his back. Photographs of the scratches showed no more than surface scratches and it was impossible to tell the depth of the wound. The medical evidence did not help in showing whether D had intended to cause really serious injury. The judge directed that the jury must be sure that the prosecution had proved that D had intended to cuase grievious bodily harm or to wound. D was convicted of a s.18 offence but on appeal the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction on the basis that the judge had misdirected the jury. An intention to wound was not sufficient for the MR of s.18. Instead the Court of Appeal substituted a conviction for s.20 |
| Morrison 1989 | The prosecution must prove that he had specific intention to resist or prevent arrest, but so far as the injury it need only prove that he was reckless as to whether his actions would cause a wound or injury. A police officer seized hold of D and told him that she was arresting him. He dived through a window, dragging her with him as far as the window so that her face was badly cut by the glass. The Court of Appeal held that as the word 'maliciously' is used in respect of this part of the section it must have the same meaning as in Cunningham. This means that the prosecution must prove that D either intended injury or realised there was a risk of injury and took that risk. |
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