{"id":5764,"date":"2018-03-07T09:27:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T09:27:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-10-28T14:00:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T14:00:23","slug":"r-v-williams-and-davies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/r-v-williams-and-davies.php","title":{"rendered":"R v Williams and Davies &#8211; 1992"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Legal Case Summary<\/h2>\n<p><strong>R v Williams and Davies [1992] 1 WLR 380<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"alert alert-info mb-3 mt-4\">Unlawful Act Manslaughter \u2013 Causation \u2013 Eggshell Skull Rule<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"facts\">Facts<\/h3>\n<p>The defendants picked up a hitchhiker who was on his way to Glastonbury festival.\u00a0 The defendants then attempted to rob the victim who became agitated and afraid and in this mental state jumped out of the moving vehicle which was travelling at 30 mph.\u00a0 The victim hit his head and died of his injuries.\u00a0 The defendants were charged with manslaughter.\u00a0 What had happened in the car to cause the victim to jump out was not certain.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"issues\">Issues<\/h3>\n<p>Whether the act of the defendant in jumping out of the car broke the chain of causation.\u00a0 The victim had jumped out of the car and this was an act of his which may have been argued to have broken the chain of causation between the defendant\u2019s unlawful act of robbing the victim and his death.\u00a0 What role the question of foreseeability of the victim\u2019s actions played in the defendant\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"decision\">Decision \/ Outcome<\/h3>\n<p>The defendants were found not guilty after a direction to this effect was given to the jury.\u00a0 Modifying the test set down in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/r-v-roberts.php\">R v Roberts (1971) 56 Cr App R 95<\/a><strong> <\/strong>which held that the chain of causation would only be broken if the victim committed an act so unforeseeable that no reasonable man could be expected to foresee the act, it was held that the jury should consider whether the victim\u2019s act was within the range of reasonable responses available to the victim in the circumstances.\u00a0 This required consideration of his psychological state and any particular characteristics of the victim and an acknowledgement that the stress of the situation or event may lead to the victim acting without thought.\u00a0 In this case however there was not enough evidence that the defendant\u2019s acts had led to the victim\u2019s reaction being within the range of reasonable responses available to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The defendants picked up a hitchhiker who was on his way to Glastonbury festival.\u00a0 The defendants then attempted to rob the victim who became agitated and afraid and in this mental state jumped out of the moving vehicle which was travelling at 30 mph.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-5764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","tag-uk-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v26.6) - 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