The Supreme Court unanimously held that the two-stage Ghosh test for dishonesty was incorrect. Dishonesty is to be judged by an objective standard of ordinary decent members of society, with the defendant's actual state of knowledge or belief as to facts being the only subjective element. The decision applies to both civil and criminal law.

The Court of Appeal formulated a two-stage test for dishonesty in theft, requiring both an objective assessment by ordinary standards and the defendant subjective awareness of that dishonesty. This test governed property offences for over three decades until the Supreme Court in Ivey v Genting Casinos stated that the second limb was wrong, and the Court of Appeal in Barton and Booth confirmed that the Ivey test applies in criminal cases.

After Daniel McNaghten was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity, the House of Lords asked the judges to state the law on insanity. Their answers, given by Tindal CJ, became the McNaghten Rules and remain the basis of the legal test of insanity in English law. The defence requires proof of a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, which meant the defendant did not know the nature and quality of his act or that it was wrong.

Dudley and Stephens, adrift in an open boat after a shipwreck, killed and ate a cabin boy to survive. The Queen's Bench Division held that necessity was no defence to murder, so that their conviction followed on the facts found by the jury. It is the leading authority that killing an innocent person cannot be justified by necessity.

The defendant obtained the complainant's submission by pretending to perform a surgical operation. The court held that her consent was to a medical procedure, not to sexual intercourse, and therefore constituted rape. The decision established the principle that fraud as to the nature of the act negates consent, distinguishing it from fraud as to the identity or qualities of the person.

The Court for Crown Cases Reserved applied the doctrine of transferred malice. The defendant aimed a blow with a belt at one man, but the belt struck and wounded a woman instead. His malice towards the intended victim was held to apply to the woman actually hit, and his conviction for unlawful and malicious wounding was upheld.

Steane concerns an actor who made propaganda broadcasts for Germany during the Second World War after threats to his family. The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his conviction, holding that the prosecution still had to prove an intent to assist the enemy and that an act done to protect his family was consistent with no such intent. The case is a standard source on the distinction between intention and motive.

The defendant stabbed the victim, who died after receiving negligent medical treatment in hospital. The court held that the treatment was so independent of the original wound that it became the sole cause of death, breaking the chain of causation.