Court Martial Appeal Court · Lord Parker CJ gave the judgment of the Court Martial Appeal Court.
Facts
The appellant, a soldier, stabbed a fellow soldier with a bayonet in a fight at barracks. The victim was carried to the medical reception station, being dropped on the way, and the treatment he received there was inadequate and in part wrongly given. He died of haemorrhage from the stab wound. Medical evidence indicated that with prompt and proper treatment he might well have recovered.
History
The appellant was convicted of murder by court martial. He appealed to the Court Martial Appeal Court, arguing that negligent medical treatment broke the chain of causation.
Issue
Whether negligent medical treatment of a wound inflicted by the defendant breaks the chain of causation so as to relieve the defendant of liability for murder.
Held
Appeal dismissed; conviction upheld. The defendant's act remained the operating and substantial cause of death.
Ratio
- Where the original wound inflicted by the defendant is still an operating and substantial cause of death at the time of death, the death results from the wound even though another cause, such as poor medical treatment, is also operating. Only if the original wound is merely the setting in which another cause operates does death not result from it.
The judgments
Parker CJ (lead)
Lord Parker CJ held that the stab wound was still an operating and substantial cause of death at the time of death. The medical treatment, though inadequate, did not displace it, so the death resulted from the wound and the conviction stood.
Key reasoning
- The test is whether the original wound was still an operating and substantial cause of death at the time of death; it need not be the sole cause.
- Death still results from the wound even if other causes are also operating. Only where the original wound is merely the setting in which another cause operates can it be said that death does not result from the wound.
Where it fits in the module
This case is foundational for Topic 1 (Basic Principles of Criminal Law) on causation. It sits alongside Cheshire [1991] (which refined the test to significant contribution) and Jordan [1956] (where treatment was so palpably wrong as to break the chain). It illustrates the policy that defendants bear responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their violence, including inadequate medical care.
Criticisms
- The operating and substantial cause formulation is vague and may allow liability where the defendant's contribution is marginal compared to medical negligence.
- The test focuses on the state of the wound at death rather than the relative culpability of the defendant and the medical practitioners.
Written with AI (nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b) on 1 November 2026, reviewed for errors by a second model (claude-sonnet-5.5 (Claude Code reviewer)). Read the case itself at [1959] 2 QB 35, (1959) 43 Cr. App. R. 121. Spotted an error? Tell us.