Читать книгу Criminal Law - Mark Thomas - Страница 108

The final factor is that the defendant must remain the ‘operative’ cause of harm. This means that the operation of his act or omission must remain the significant cause of the end result and must not have been superseded by another act, independent of the defendant. Indeed, a defendant may be both the factual and legal cause of the end result, but he may not be held liable if there is an intervening event (an act or an omission) which may ‘break the chain of causation’. In this circumstance, the defendant will no longer be the operative cause of harm. For a detailed account of causation, see Hart and Honoré, Causation in the Law, 2nd edn (OUP, 1985). Intervening acts will be considered now at 2.7.3.