Assault

• Does a smack on the bottom constitute common assault?

  23rd Nov 2021

  When a female bar manager takes a male customer to court for common assault, the customer pleads guilty but is eventually granted a s10 dismissal ­­and no conviction is recorded against him. Kelly Brown outlines the details of this incident and explains what constitutes common assault.

• How the term ‘coward punch’ won a $100,000 defamation payout

  20th Feb 2020

  As Michael McHugh explains, language is a powerful tool – in society and in law.  ‘Coward punch’ describes a characteristic of the perpetrator of such an act: that in hitting a defenceless person in an unprovoked manner, the actor is not only committing a violent act but also, distinctly, is contemptibly lacking the courage to act in a proper or fair way. 

• Arresting assumptions of being 'in custody': R v Osborne-Horton (2017)

  1st Mar 2018

  Paul Blake discusses what it means to be 'in custody'.