The court considered what was required to be established for the offence of gross negligence manslaughter: ‘The prosecution has to prove the following elements.
(i) In accordance with the ordinary principles of negligence, the defendant owed the deceased a duty of care.
(ii) The defendant was in breach of that duty of care.
(iii) A reasonably prudent person would have foreseen that the defendant’s actions or omissions constituting the breach of duty had exposed the deceased to an ‘obvious and serious’ risk of death. The court in Misra and Srivastava [2004] EWCA Crim 2375; [2005] 1 Cr Ap R 21 and Yaqoob [2005] EWCA Crim 2169 confirmed that the relevant risk to be reasonably foreseen is nothing less than the risk of death.
(iv) The breach of duty either caused, or made a significant contribution (i.e. a contribution that was more than negligible) to, the deceased’s death.
(v) The departure of the defendant’s conduct from the proper standard of care incumbent upon him, involving as it must have done the risk of death, was such that the breach of duty can properly be characterised as gross negligence and therefore criminal.’
Judges:
Hickinbottom LJ, Openshaw J, Topolski QC HHJ
Citations:
[2017] EWCA Crim 1783
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Kuddus v Regina CACD 16-May-2019
The defendant appealed his conviction for gross negligence manslaughter. He ran a takeaway food business. A meal was ordered by the victim through a third party website, adding that she suffered mild allergies. There was no evidence that the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 04 July 2022; Ref: scu.598729
