Crime XXXXXXXXXIII – Battery V

Can there be consent to battery? The answer in short is yes. In Collins v Wilcock (1984) a police constable tried to arrest a woman as per s. 1 (3) of the Street Offences Act (1959) which reads as follows: -

“A constable may arrest without warrant anyone he finds in a street or public place and suspects, with reasonable cause, to be committing an offence under this section”.

The woman tried to walk away, and the police officer tried to stop her by grabbing her hand. The woman struggled to free herself and in doing so scratched the police officer. The woman was charged with assaulting a police officer.

It was held that the police officer’s actions amounted to battery. He had no power to arrest the woman and her actions were in self-defense.

The court took the opportunity to elaborate on the offence of battery. Battery can be defined as the offence of making physical contact with someone i.e. touching, pulling, elbowing, grabbing etc. without their consent.

However, the courts accept that in the course of everyday life, it is inevitable that people will make some sort of contact with each other for example when they are walking around in a crowd and under such circumstances or in those situations it is deemed that there is implied consent and such physical contact is not actionable. In other words, in these instances there is consent to battery.

The offence of battery per se is the offence of making some sort of physical contact that is not reasonable or does not fall within the scope of generally acceptable codes of conduct. What is acceptable or otherwise depends on the facts of each case.

Copyright © 2019 by Dyarne Ward