Causation, Remoteness and the Concept of the “Overwhelming Supervening Act”
| Author | Beatrice Krebs |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00220183221077261 |
| Subject Matter | Case Notes |
Causation, Remoteness
and the Concept of the
“Overwhelming Supervening Act”
R v Grant [2021] EWCA Crim 1243
Beatrice Krebs
University of Reading, UK
Keywords
accessorial liability, causation, joint enterprise, murder, overwhelming supervening act,
remoteness
The main appellants, G and K, were, respectively, the front seat passenger and driver of a car, occupied by
five people, that had been involved in a fatal hit and run. It was the prosecution case that the men had been
cruising around, looking for V1 and V2, whom they intended to do really serious bodily harm. When V1
and V2 happened to cross the road in front of them, K accelerated and deliberately hit them with the car.
After the collision, three of the occupants got out of the car. One of them proceeded to hit V1 with a metal
bar. V1 died whilst V2 remained largely uninjured.
G and K appealed against their convictions for murder as well as their sentences. K also appealed
against his conviction for attempted murder. While several grounds of appeal were raised, this case com-
mentary will focus on G’s submission that K’s decision to run down the victims, instead of attacking one
or both of them on foot in a face-to-face confrontation, amounted to a fundamental departure from the
agreed plan such as to constitute an overwhelming supervening act (OSA), and that the trial judge had
been wrong not to have given an OSA direction to the jury.
Held, dismissing the appeals against conviction, that in Jogee the Supreme Court had expressly dis-
avowed the suggestion that the secondary liability of someone who encourages or assists the crime is
based on causation (at [31]). This was an insuperable obstacle to the suggestion that the concept of
OSA should be viewed through the lens of causation (at [32]).
Jogee had significantly limited the circumstances in which a jury would need to consider the possibi-
lity that there had been a departure from the agreed plan. As regards murder, the effect of the decision in
Jogee, and particularly paragraph [12], was that the principal focus of the court as regards OSA would be
on whether there was a credible basis for suggesting that the accessory’s encouragement or assistance
‘has faded to the point of mere background’,or‘has been spent of all possible force by some overwhelm-
ing intervening occurrence by the time the offence was committed’and which ‘nobody in the defendant’s
shoes could have contemplated might happen and is of such a character as to relegate his acts to history’.
Corresponding author:
Beatrice Krebs, University of Reading, Foxhill House, Shinfield Road, Reading, RG6 6AH, UK.
Email: b.krebs@reading.ac.uk
Case Note
The Journal of Criminal Law
2022, Vol. 86(1) 42–45
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00220183221077261
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