Criminal Liability Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Criminal Liability - Case Study ExampleThe 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 immaculate case of criminal liability for omission, Wrights actual words leave some room for doubtThus the judge may actually have been sightedness liability coming from the fact that Pitwood had left the level cover gate open rather than the fact that he had not shut 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 elementsDuty is imposed by common police 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 interpose cause while gross negligence is the fact that the standard of performance or non-performance is so bad as to make it criminal.How do Jons acts fit into these elements inaugural of all he had a duty to the clients of the gym because he is employed as an instructor. A gym has potentially very dangerous equipment within it - as what happens to Ian shows - and anyone employed by it has a duty of care towards the clients. There is a clear breach of duty in both 1) and 2). The breach in 1) is an spokesperson of negligence, while that in 2) moves well beyond even gross negligence into an intentional act that is designed to seriously hurt or even obscure Ian. In this case the omission rises to the point of an act. He possesses both the mens rea and the actus reus for the crime of murder. If Ian had been outright killed by the weights falling onto his chest, Jon could have been char ged with murder. However, a difficult arises as to the fact that there is clearly an intervening event which actually leads to the death. While Jon was clearly expecting Ian to be injured, it was not reasonable for him to think that he would be supersensitized to antibiotics and that the doctor would not notice and give them to him. At the same time the but for principle is at work. In other words, but for the actions of Jon, Ian would have neer been in the hospital in the first place. The intervening event and but for principles would create