Re-reading Andrews v DPP

There are two prominent criticisms of unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter (UDAM): (i) in principle, any offence other than one of negligence (or, perhaps, strict liability) can be the base crime in UDAM; and (ii) the defendant’s act must carry with it merely a foreseeable risk of some harm to another person, rather than a foreseeable risk of death. This article suggests that both problems could have been avoided if the courts had read the House of Lords’ notoriously opaque decision in Andrews v DPP to require that the fault regarding the causing of death in UDAM and gross negligence manslaughter (GNM) must be at least equivalent. That road was not taken, but it is suggested that developments in causal doctrine point to a way of provoking re-engagement by the Court of Appeal with this issue of equivalent fault.