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@edmundane
Manslaughter by gross negligence
Under English law, where a person causes death through extreme carelessness or incompetence, gross negligence is required. While the specifics of negligence may vary from one jurisdiction to another, it is generally defined as failure to exercise a reasonable level of precaution given the circumstances and so may include both acts and omissions. The defendants in such cases are often people carrying out jobs that require special skills or care, such as doctors, police or prison officers, or electricians, who fail to meet the standard which could be expected from a reasonable person of the same profession and cause death. In R v Bateman 1925 Cr. App R. 8 the Court of Criminal Appeal held that gross negligence manslaughter involved the following elements:
the defendant owed a duty to the deceased to take care;
the defendant breached this duty;
the breach caused the death of the deceased; and
the defendant's negligence was gross, that is, it showed such a disregard for the life and safety of others as to amount to a crime and deserve punishment.
The House of Lords in Seymour 1983 2 AC 493 sought to identify the mens rea for "motor manslaughter" (negligently causing death when driving a motor vehicle). Reference was made to Caldwell 1982 AC 341 and Lawrence 1982 AC 510 which held that a person was reckless if:
he did an act which in fact created an obvious and serious risk of injury to the person or substantial damage to property; and
when he did the act he either had not given any thought to the possibility of there being any such risk or had recognised that there was some risk involved and had nonetheless gone on to do it.
The conclusion was that for motor manslaughter (and, by implication, for all cases of gross negligence), it was more appropriate to adopt this definition of recklessness. Consequently, if the defendant created an obvious and serious risk of causing physical injury to someone, there could be liability whether there was simple inadvertence or conscious risk-taking. It was no longer a defence to argue that the negligence had not been gross.