Criminal Law Liability - Essay Example

There is also the legal duty to act because of an actual or implied contract. For example, in R. v. Pitwood (1902)2 a defendant was convicted of manslaughter after he failed to close a level crossing gate with the result of a hay cart and a train colliding. The collision resulted in the death of a man. Pitwood argued that he had no legal duty to the deceased, but Judge Wright held that he did have one arising from his contract of employment. While R. v. Pitwood is often regarded as a classic case of criminal liability for omission, Wright's actual words leave some room for doubt: Thus the judge may actually have been seeing liability coming from the fact that Pitwood had left the level crossing gate open rather than the fact that he had not shot the level crossing gate.

Thus did the liability come from an action or an inaction It would seem that the former occurred. This was a case of gross negligence manslaughter, a crime that is a useful background to the whole subject of criminal liability for omission. In general such manslaughter requires the following elements: Duty is imposed by common law statute. . A breach is the failure to do something or doing something incorrectly according to the standard expected. The causal link is the fact that death has resulted from this failure with no intervening cause while gross negligence is the fact that the standard of performance or non-performance is so bad as to make it criminal.

A "reasonable person" standard can apply when there is no actual contractual arrangement. Thus if a 'reasonable person" would have acted in a manner that would have prevented or avoided the resulting damage/injury then the defendant may be found liable. For example, in R. v. Miller4 (1982) a defendant was held liable for criminal damage to a building that had been caused by a fire. Miller was a tramp who had fallen asleep in a disused property while smoking a cigarette. The cigarette fell onto the mattress he was asleep on, and when he woke up because of the smoke, Miller did not attempt to put the cigarette/smoldering out but merely moved to another room and fell asleep.

The court found that Miller was bound to act because the dangerous circumstance had been of his own making, and the omission that had subsequently occurred was of a criminal nature. By contrast, if Miller had been a person passing by the house and had seen it smoldering but had done nothing he would not have had a duty to put the fire out and thus the other elements of the crime would be irrelevant. Miller, as well as Pitwood also brings up a problem that has yet to be fully resolved regarding criminal liability for omission.

The problem revolves around the fact that a general principle of criminal law is that the mens rea of the offence must exist at the time of the actus reus. Essentially there must be a coincidence of the actus reus and the mens