⇒ A battery is a direct and unintentional physical contact with another person without lawful justification
⇒ Some contact is acceptable in everyday life:
⇒ Consent to contact can preclude battery i.e. if you consent to what is about to happen to you then it might not be a battery e.g. when you play rugby
⇒ You can consent to medical treatment too...
⇒ Consent to medical treatment can be refused, even if unreasonable i.e. you can refuse medical treatment even if stupid, such as in a circumstance where you could die
⇒ But, the refusal of medical treatment (by the patient) can be ignored where the doctors think that patient didn’t really mean to refuse the treatment e.g. where they are in pain and on medication so shouldn’t take the refusal at face value
⇒ Even without consent to the treatment, doctors can still intervene by invoking ‘best interests necessity’ → so this would be used in cases where the patient is incapable of giving consent e.g. they are unconscious
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⇒ In Scott v Shepherd, the defendant threw a lit squib into a market. The squib was thrown on several times, before exploding and injuring the claimant (causing him to lose the use of one eye). The court said that the physical contact was still direct, and the people in the middle (who threw the squib on) didn’t interfere with the directness
⇒ Directness in that there is no other significant voluntary act which intervenes.
⇒ In Letang v Cooper [1965] it was decided by a majority that battery must be intentional
⇒ An intentional act is a conscious and voluntary contact with the body of the claimant (Gibbons v Pepper (1695))
⇒ Harm need not be intended by the defendant
⇒ There must be unlawful contact to the claimant e.g. in Collins v Wilcock [1984], the judge said the contact to the claimant must have been unacceptable in the ordinary affairs of life
⇒ Necessity: battery may be acceptable where it is necessary e.g. where there is a medical or other need to act (Re F (Mental Patient: Sterilisation) [1990])
⇒ Mental Capacity Act 2005: e.g. where a person does not have mental capacity to consent to medical treatment it may be possible to conduct treatment on them regardless
⇒ Self-defence: see, for example, the case of Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex Police
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