Law Weblog

Dica gets 8 years for “Biological GBH”

On Monday 3 November 2003 Mohammed Dica was sentenced to eight years imprisonment at Inner London Crown Court having been found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm at Inner London Crown Court on 14 October 2003. At his October trial, the court heard that Dica, 38, a married father of three, knowingly infected two lovers with the HIV virus.

A Lady becomes a Lord: Barbara Hale is appointed the first woman member of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords

Lady Hale will become the first female Law Lord
Dame Brenda Hale, 58, (a Lady Justice of Appeal since 1999) will become one of 12 Lord Laws.

Although known as Law Lords, Dame Brenda will be known as Lady Hale.

She will earn £175,055-a-year when she starts in January.

The most senior female judge in England and Wales was Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the High Court’s Family Division.

The House of Lords still remains unrepresentative Dame Brenda will be the only woman among the twelve top judges and there are no black or minority ethnic judges.

Caldwell Recklessness abandoned by the House of Lords.

R v G and another (2003)HL (R v Gemmell and Richards) DD aged 11 and 12 went camping without their parents approval. They went to the back of the Co-op in Newport Pagnell, lit some newspapers which set fire to a wheelie-bin which set fire to the shop, cause £1m of damage. They were convicted of arson by a jury. Both the judge and jury appear to have been not content with applying the objective approach that the law required in R v Caldwell (1982) HL. Held: Unanimously, Caldwell was wrongly decided, the test of recklessness was found in the preparatory work of the Law Commission prior to the Criminal Damage Act 1971. The test now is: “A person acts recklessly within the meaning of section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 with respect to – (i) a circumstance when he is aware of a risk that it exists or will exist; (ii) a result when he is aware of a risk that it will occur; and it is, in the circumstances known to him, unreasonable to take the risk.” (Based on clause 18(c) of the Criminal Code Bill annexed by the Law Commission to its Report “A Criminal Code for England and Wales Volume 1: Report and Draft Criminal Code Bill” (Law Com No 177, April 1989)) Not guilty of arson (criminal damage by fire) Whole case, here.

Not Gross Negligence Manslaughter

R v Wood & Hodgson (2003)Crown Court
DD the householders where a ten-year-old girl used to go round to play with their baby and to watch videos. On one visit she found ecstasy tablets in a cigarette packet and ate some of them (?5). She was obviously ill but DD did not call an ambulance for about 1½ hours. V died.
Held: DD were acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter in allowing V to get hold of the tablets, the jury obviously thought that DD had taken care to hide them from her, and so were not grossly negligent.

“Biological GBH”?

R v Dica (2003) Crown Court
D infected two women with HIV. Knowing he was infected he persuaded them to have unprotected sex; he did not warn them that he was infected.
Held: Guilty of causing grievous bodily harm.

Note: Clarence (1888.) is now doubted. However, this case is to be appealed.
News report, here

Negligence – duty of care – school not liable when boy falls off swing

Simonds v Isle of Wight Council (2003)QBD
Playing fields could not be made free of all hazards and because a school had diagnosed a hazard did not mean it was duty bound to take further steps to make access or use impossible.
The issue in this case was “causation”.

A five year old was told him to return to his teachers after lunch with his mum during a sports day. He went to play on swings and broke his arm.
Held: The school had been responsible for him all day and that the mother’s acts or omissions had not broken the chain of causation. However, this was simply an accident which had not disclosed any causative fault. The school had had a good plan for dealing with the swings; no one other than the claimant had played on them. Balancing the element of risk, it was not reasonable to impose a legal duty on a school to immobilise the swings any more than it would be to rope off a tree on the field. Playing fields could not be made free of all hazard. Furthermore, since the boy’s mother had not redelivered him back to the care of the school, there was no breach of any duty by the school.

Getting it wrong can be expensive

Tort – damages – quantum
Batchelor v Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon Health Authority.

30 September 2003.
Baby suffered brain damage by suffocating during birth. The mother’s labour had to be induced, and during the birth negligent medical staff failed to realise the claimant’s mother was experiencing difficulties. As a result of the suffocation the claimant now suffers from cerebral palsy, severe learning difficulties and epilepsy.
The hospital admitted liability and agreed to pay a settlement of £3,400,000.

Delegated legislation – Parent (Enabling) Act

The Fireworks Act 2003 makes provision for the Secretary of State to make regulations (“fireworks regulations”) which will regulate the supply and use of fireworks, including the powers to:
– impose a noise limit of 120 decibels on fireworks available to the public;

– ban the use of fireworks during anti-social hours;

– license people who sell fireworks;

– allow local authorities to refuse and revoke licenses if retailers act inappropriately; and

– create a compulsory training course for operators of public firework displays.

The DTI will be consulting next year on draft regulations which will be in place for the 2004 fireworks season.

1,200% increase of Government use of ADR

Government use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has shot up by 1,200 per cent on the previous year.
The Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA) report ‘Monitoring the effectiveness of the Government’s commitment to using ADR’ discloses that ADR was used in 617 Government disputes in 2002/2003 “an increase of over 1,200 per cent”. 89 per cent settled without recourse to a hearing.

“No fault” scheme for Clinical Negligence comes closer

In June 2003 The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) recommends a revolutionary approach towards clinical negligence claims that would include a no fault, tariff-based compensation scheme, for the NHS. The CMO is attracted by a no fault approach, but has stopped short of this, save for cases involving severely neurologically-impaired babies.
Full report, here
Making amends, here