Top Highlights

• criminal liability for omissions has always had its limitations in order to respect an individual’s autonomy. 17 Where action is mandatory in any given circumstance, there is no longer any freedom of choice
• ou must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour.
• acts or omissions which any moral code would censure cannot in a practical world be treated so as to give a right to every person injured by them to demand relief
• civil form of negligence, as represented by this quote, would be incorporated literally into the criminal law but this now seems to be the case
• Bowditch’s ‘failure to take any steps’ to prevent the victim’s death ‘forms the basis of his culpability for manslaughter.

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