terms for assault and ABH

Assault

Assault means common assault so it could be an assault or a battery as set out above. All of the elements of teh AR and MR of the assault or battery must be proved.

Occasioning

Occasioning means causing. It is necessary to prove that there was an assault or battery and that this caused ABH> the normal rain piles of causation are applied.

ABH

The injury caused is what differentiates ABH from other non-fatal offences:

R v Miller 1964 - ABH is ‘any hurt or injury calculated to interfere with the health or comfort of the victim’.

R v Chan Fook 1994 - ‘Actual’ means not so trivial as to be wholly insignificant.

‘Harm’ is injury which goes beyond interference with the health and comfort of teh victim.

‘Bodily’ is not limited to harm to skin, flesh and bones, but includes injury to the nervous system and brain such as recognised and identifiable psychiatric harm.

R (t) v DPP 2003 - loss of concisions, even momentarily, was held to be ABH. The defendant and a group of other youths chased the victim who fell to the ground and saw the defendant coming towards him. He covered his head shirt his arms and was kicked. He momentarily lost consciousness, which was sufficient for ABH.

DPP v Smith 2006 - physical pain is not necessary; cutting a substantial amount of the victim’s hair could amount to ABH.

The principle in R v Brown 1994 was continued in R v BM 2018.

This confirmed it would not be in the public interest to allow members of the public to wound each other without ‘good reason’ and remains good law.