Explain the meaning of the term “causation”
Sometimes the defendant’s actions have to result in a particular consequence. These are known as result crimes; an example would be assault occasioning actual bodily harm, where the conduct is assault and the result ABH. The rules of causation decide whether the defendants act caused the prohibited consequence. The court must establish both causation in fact, and causation in law.
To determine factual causation, the “but for” test is used. This says that but for the defendants conduct, would the victim have suffered the harm. An example of the but for test would be in R v White, where the defendant put cyanide into his mothers drink, however she died of heart failure before the cyanide could affect her. The but for test showed she would have died regardless of him putting cyanide into her drink, so there was no factual causation.