An Omission
An omission is a failure to act. Where someone fails to act, they will
not be liable under criminal law however, in some situations people
have a duty to act and criminally liability will be imposed.
An example of when someone has a duty to act is when there is a
special relationship. A practical example of this is demonstrated in
the case of R v Lowe. Whereby the parents failed to call the doctor
when their child fell ill. The special relationship between the child
and the father made the father criminal liable where he failed to act
under his duty of care. It has been argued though; that the child’s
parents were not entirely mentally stable and that social services or
a third party should have been involved. But some may not have seen
this as a reasonable defence because he had been entrusted with the
responsibility of that child.
Another illustration of a duty to act would be the voluntary
acceptance of responsibility for another. Such as the case of R v
Stone & Dobinson. The case is satisfactory due to the fact that they
both accepted responsibility for stones sister. By failing to feed her
and seek medical help they incurred criminal liability for her death.
On the other hand, Stone and Dobinson were not mentally equipped to
sufficiently carry out their duty of care. It could also be argued
that they did make some attempt to care for Fanny, but the court
decided that they had still failed in caring for somebody they have a
duty for.
Contract can also give rise to a duty to act. In the case of R v
Pittwood, where a man became immediately criminally liable when he
failed to act under his contract resulted in a death. The decision in
When past services are rendered with a promise to pay, the court may enforce the promise to pay. However in Dementas’s case, the service was rendered after the promise to pay. The court found that Dementas’s services were rendered with no expectation of payment from Tallas. Moral obligation was created after some courts found the ruling to be too harsh. Even if moral obligation was applied to Dementas’s case, the court found that Dementas performed all services without expecting any payments in
During the court case the judge said that lead social worker Gunn Wahlstrom was “naïve beyond belief”. This report brought over 68 recommendations to make sure cases like this did not happen again. The recommendations included putting the child first and the parent’s second. “Jasmines’ fate illustrates all too clearly the disastrous consequences of the misguides attitude of the social workers having treated Morris Beckford and Beverley Lorrington as the clients first and foremost” (London Borough of Brent, 1985,p295). The social workers in Jasmine’s c...
Mcnaughton, David. "An Unconnected Heap of Duties?" The Philosophical Quarterly 46: 433-447. Obtained from PHIL 250 B1, Winter Term 2014 Further Readings – Ethics. University of Alberta eClass.
This act also covers sexual harassment in the workplace. Discrimination disrupt good order and discipline and creates a hostile environment. These actions are considered immoral and as law-abiding citizens, it is our duty to intervene to curtail these types’ actions. Duty theory talks about two approaches, the first imply we all have a catalog of instinctive obligations. The Ten Commandments is a perfect example because it speaks about not killing, committing adultery, covet thy neighbor things and bear false witness. These practices have been adopted by many cultures, which play an important role in their
When a court is dealing with proceedings relating to a child, section 1 of the Children Act 1989 (CA 1989) governs that the court’s paramount consideration shall lie with the child’s welfare. The term paramount was explained by Lord Macdermott in J v C which means ‘that the child’s welfare is to be treated as the top item in a list of items relevant to the matter of question’. His Lordship went on to explain that when all the relevant facts and circumstances are taken into account and weighed, the outcome chosen by the court is based on the interests of the relevant child. Therefore any other party’s interest is only considered as far as it contributes to promote the child’s best interest.
...d, ‘so far as the threshold conditions are concerned, the factor which seems to me to outweigh all others is the prospect than an unidentified, and unidentifiable, carer may inflict further injury on a child he or she has already severely damaged’. This approach was later applied in Merton LBC v K .
moral duty and obligations. Such as employee theft and fraud, dishonesty like Bernard Ebbers a
of the theory even say that it is one's moral duty to act on these
Moral obligations should typically not be so demanding that enormous sacrificies must be made in order to fulfill them (Liao, Savulescu, & Sheehan, 2007).
“The traditional professing of duty states an intention to serve the community rather than merely to seek income.” (Macionis, Page 384)
...st luckily desires to do things that are in accordance to duty. An action has moral worth if and only if it is done from the motive of duty because it may go against our desires, but we still ignore what we might want because we know what we must do.
... that of being possible beneficiaries by my action. They do stand in this relation to me, and this relation is morally significant. But they may also stand to me in the relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like; and each of these relations is the foundation of a prima facie duty, which is more or less incumbent on me according to the circumstances of the case."
One of the last remaining strongholds of classical contract law is the notion that contracts require offer and acceptance therefore, in order for a contract to become binding, offer, acceptance, consideration and intention to create legal relations must exist. However contracts are formed in different ways for each different circumstance. (Shawn Bayern, Offer and Acceptance in Modern Contract Law: A Needles Concept, 103 Cal. L. Rev. 67, 102 (2015)
based on duty. To act morally is to do one’s duty, and one’s duty is
Acting out of duty in Kant’s point of view is acting in respect to the