Illegal Drug Causation: The of Kennedy or Finlay and Empress - Case Study Example

The principles of causation had become decidedly settled, particularly with respect to the culpability of the supplier of illegal drugs which subsequently claimed the life of a user.4 The position at common law had become doubtful as enunciated in Finlay [2003] EWCA Crim 3868 which relied on the ruling in the case of Environment Agency v Empress Car Co. (Abertillery) Co. Ltd. [1999] 2 AC 22.5 In essence these two cases introduced into the common law the principle that the supplier of illegal drugs that claimed the life of another could be guilty of homicide.

6 R v Kennedy [2007] 3 WLR 612, took an entirely different approach, ruling that the victim made the decision to administer the drugs and the supplier could not have been liable for this decision.7While R v Kennedy comports to earlier principles of causation it can be argued that the decision in Finlay is far more clinical in that it strictly interprets the principles of causation in that it subscribes to narrowly to the underlying concepts of foreseeability, Novus actus interveniens and other essential elements of causation.

Ironically, the Empress case, upon which Finlay relies, cautions against such an approach. The purpose of this paper is to explore the established principles of causation in support of the contention that the Finlay and Empress while they are representative of the principles of causation, those principles were misapplied in Finlay, and Kennedy, while more flexible in the application of the main principles of causation took the common sense approach extolled in Express.