R v Chan-Fook
Actual bodily harm includes psychiatric injury, but not mere emotions such as fear, distress or panic.
Facts
Mr Chan-Fook suspected a French student lodging in his fiancée's house of stealing her ring. He questioned the student aggressively, dragged him upstairs and locked him in a room. The student, terrified, escaped by climbing out of the window, and was injured when he fell. Mr Chan-Fook was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The judge directed the jury that the harm could include a hysterical and nervous condition.
Legal principle
The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. Hobhouse LJ said that actual bodily harm means harm that is not so trivial as to be wholly insignificant, and that it can include psychiatric injury, but not mere emotions such as fear or panic, or a state of mind that is not itself evidence of an identifiable clinical condition. Where psychiatric injury is relied on, it must be supported by expert evidence. The judge's direction had been inadequate.
Related cases on non-fatal offences against the person
- Collins v Wilcock [1984] 1 WLR 1172
- Director of Public Prosecutions v Smith (Michael) [2006] EWHC 94 (Admin), [2006] 1 WLR 1571
- JCC (A Minor) v Eisenhower [1984] QB 331
- Logdon v Director of Public Prosecutions [1976] Crim LR 121
- R v BM [2018] EWCA Crim 560
- R v Bollom [2003] EWCA Crim 2846, [2004] 2 Cr App R 6
- R v Brown [1994] 1 AC 212
- R v Constanza [1997] 2 Cr App R 492
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