My leisure interests

Martial arts Heritage railways Garden railways Motorcycles DIY

Downloads

Linux downloads Windows downloads Java downloads Perl downloads Home automation downloads

About me

Home & family My CV

Site info

Contact the author Download policy Keyword index

R v Fagan (1969)

Last modified: Thu Feb 23 16:37:37 2006

This case ([1969] 1 QB 439) demonstrates that although an Assault cannot be commited by omission, it may be possible to construe the ActusReus of assault in such a way that a technicality cannot be used to clear the accused in cases of clear wrongdoing. In this case, the accused intentionally stopped his car on a policeman's foot and refused to move it. In his defence he argued that although he had the mens reus (intention) and did the actus reus (stopping the car), they were not coincidental. Refusing to move the car was not, he argued, an assault in itself. The court was not convinced by this argument. Instead it construed the actus reus as a sequence of events beginning when the car stopped and finishing when it was moved off. During the latter part of this continuous action, the accused had the mens rea. Accordingly he was convicted of assaulting a police officer in the course of his duty (s.51(1) of the PoliceAct1964).

CaseLaw

Law glossary index

Shameless plug

By the author of this site. Buy on-line from Amazon USA | UK

Editorial

So you want to be a university lecturer? Read this first! Speak like your boss: new developments in managerese

Computing features

File handling in the Linux kernel: an in-depth look at how Linux handles files, filesystems, and file I/O All sorts of Linux stuff Confused about CLASSPATH? answers are here First steps in EJB using jBoss (recently revised for jBoss 3.2)