A man was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter by a jury in 2004. \u00a0The jury were directed by a single judge that the defendant had a duty of care\u00a0towards the deceased man, a father of\u00a0several children,\u00a0as the defendant was the owner of the property.\u00a0 With the aid of forensic\u00a0investigation,\u00a0evidence was uncovered that both men had splashed petrol around the property with the intention of burning it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The defendant was in considerable debt, the property derelict\u00a0and the business he ran in it had failed.\u00a0 He had been unable to secure planning permission to redevelop the building because the fa\u00e7ade was listed.\u00a0 Unexpected ignition of the petrol from a cigarette caused an explosion and the deceased was killed by\u00a0the collapsing building.\u00a0 The defendant was just outside the property and only slightly injured.\u00a0 The property fronted immediately on to the public pavement. \u00a0coincidentally no one was passing by at that moment.<\/p>\n
The defendant was granted leave to appeal to the charge as the judge was said to have improperly directed the jury that a duty of care existed towards the deceased. \u00a0The five principles to establish a duty of care are: the foreseeability of harm, the relationship\/proximity between the people involved, the fair, just and reasonableness of the activity concerned. \u00a0The jury should have been allowed to determine if a duty of care existed, if so that it had been breached and that it had caused or contributed to the death.\u00a0 The Court of Appeal held the judgment despite a duty of care not being established. \u00a0They determined that the jury would have found him guilty as his actions were deliberate for financial gain and of a reckless nature.\u00a0 It was deemed by the appellate court to be an exceptional case considering its recklessness and not just a\u00a0civil unlawful manslaughter case. \u00a0In the interest of the public\u00a0the charge\u00a0had to be seen to be\u00a0suitably disciplinary.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0outcome of the case was deemed to have altered the balance of the judicial and jury relationship in favour of the judicial decision in order to give a clear authoritative signal as to the consequence of causing harm by such reckless behaviour and for personal financial gain. \u00a0The criterion for gross negligence manslaughter were\u00a0clarified\u00a0by the case of an anaesthetist who did not notice that the artificial ventilation for the patient had come loose.\u00a0 Several minutes passed before the error was noticed and the patient died as a result.\u00a0 Was a similar charge commensurate for the death of the deceased even though he was an accomplice?\u00a0 Was the harm caused equal to that of a doctor killing\u00a0(by omission) a\u00a0patient?\u00a0 Was justice served for the public interest\u00a0by handing down a\u00a0prison sentence of 12 years? \u00a0Could a custodial sentence be considered to give justice\u00a0to the deceased and his family?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter by a jury in 2004. \u00a0The jury were directed by a single judge that the defendant had a duty of care\u00a0towards the deceased man, a father of\u00a0several children,\u00a0as the defendant was the owner of the property.\u00a0 With the aid of forensic\u00a0investigation,\u00a0evidence was uncovered that both men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39890,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[136347],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39890"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}