DPP v Taylor ; DPP v Little
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 27 June 1991 |
| Date | 27 June 1991 |
| Court | House of Lords |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Mann and Mr Justice Hidden
Criminal procedure - common assault and battery - amending specimen charge
Common assault and battery were statutory offences and had been so since the Offences against the Person Act 1861. Accordingly, they should be charged as being "contrary to section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988" and the specimen charge in Stone's Justices' Manual 1991 (123rd edition, volume 3, paragraph 9-90) required amendment.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court, so held in (i) allowing the prosecution's appeal against the dismissal by Darlington Justices of an information against Keith Richard Taylor and (ii) dismissing the prosecution appeal against the dismissal by Barking Justices of an information against Stephen Kenneth Little.
Mr Peter Gower for Mr Taylor; Mr Howard Godfrey, QC and Mr Andrew Williams for Mr Little; Mr Andrew Collins, QC, for the DPP in both appeals.
LORD JUSTICE MANN, said that whether the offences of common assault and battery were statutory offences and how a charge of common assault should be formulated were two questions of general importance in regard to the summary prosecution of assaults.
Assault and battery were treated in the statute as separate offences and had always been separate offences: see R v Mansfield Justices, Ex parte SharkeyELR ([1985] QB 613); Fagan v Commissioner of Police of the MetropolisELR ([1969] 1 QB 439); and R v WilliamsUNK ((1983) 78 Cr App R 276).
In section 47 of the 1861 Act Parliament employed "assault" as including the use of force for without force it would only be in a most unusual case that an assault could occasion actual bodily harm. Such a case would be that of a person who was put in such fear of force being about to be used against him, that he jumped from a high window with injurious consequences. It was too late to contemplate that the familiar offence of "actual bodily harm" was confined to such unusual cases.
The phrase "common assault" had to be, and in practice had long been, construed in a consistent and similar sense. The adjective "common" served only to differentiate particular assaults for which specific provision was made.
Lord Justice May's conclusion in R v Harrow Justices, Ex parte OsaseriELR([1986] QB 589) that section 47 of the 1861 Act created a new statutory offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm...
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