If when driving, you knock someone&#39;s door off, are you at fault? In the UK, if you are driving and a road rage incident with the car in front commences, causing them to step out of their car and leave their door open while they raise either their fists or a weapon at you - if you feel your life is threatened and you accelerate past their car and knock their driver door off, assuming there was no other way to escape - can you be in trouble here with regard to the law?
This Question Is Tricker Than It Seems One of the things about being a non-expert in a field is that it is very difficult to know in advance what is a hard question and what is an easy question. Some questions that seem like they should have simple, straight forward answers are actually very hard to answer. Some questions that seem like they should be very difficult and have involved tricky answers are actually very easy. Without an in depth understanding of the field, you just can't know in advance. It turns out that this particular question is a quite hard question to answer. So, rather than really providing a clear answer, I will explain what about this question makes it hard to answer in this answer. Even this incomplete and ultimately inconclusive answer will require far, far more words (2,078 to be exact), than were necessary to pose the question (94 words). Essentially, the core difficulty is that there are several different principles of law that apply to this fact pattern, each of which, individually have specific things that have to be proved to establish that some legal consequence will follow (which in turn are often themselves intrinsically indefinite), and each of which has exceptions that could also be proved if specific things happen. In part, this is because, while the fact pattern set forth is not freakishly unforeseeable, it is also not a fact pattern that was contemplated when any of the individual legal principles that are implicated were conceived. Likewise, the interaction of these different legal principles in one fact pattern wasn't contemplated and there is probably no one clear controlling case precedent on point that involved this fact pattern. What the law does in cases like these (which come up all the time in real life) is to break down each legal theory individually and analyze it, possibly spread over multiple distinct court cases in different courts in front of different judges. I'll try to unpack the issues (dispensing with U.K. legal terminology in some cases, since I'm only trying to provide a sense of why this is complicated and not to provide a definitive answer to how it is resolved under U.K. law). Possible Claims, Charges, and Defenses; Traffic, Civil, and Criminal It is a crime to threaten someone with weapon or in another way that puts someone at risk of imminent harm. Depending upon the weapon and other circumstances, mere possession of the weapon might be a crime in the U.K. Someone who has been threatened with weapon or in another way that puts them at risk of imminent harm can be a civil lawsuit for money damages against the person making the threat which was called &quot;assault&quot; in historical common law. Someone who has been threatened by another can seek a restraining order/protective order directing that person to stay away from them in the courts in a civil action. Hitting someone else's car is a traffic violation, unless a defense to the traffic violation is present and proven. Hitting someone else's car with a statutorily mandated level of intent is a crime, unless a justification for the crime is present and proven. The person whose car was hit could credibly argue that hitting the door was a mistake, not because the door was hit, but because the driver intended to kill them and missed, so an attempted homicide charge could raised in a criminal proceeding. The person whose car was hit could argue that there was an intend to put them in imminent risk of harm providing a basis for a civil lawsuit for money damages for common law assault. Someone whose car is hit by another car through negligence or recklessly or intentionally can bring one or more claims in a civil lawsuit against the person who car hit their car for money damages. The standard of care for negligence is established by how a reasonable person would act under the circumstances. Self-defense is a possible defense to traffic offenses, criminal charges and civil liability related to harming another's property if the conditions for self-defense apply, which include a risk of imminent harm to oneself, another, or one's property, and if the action taken in self-defense is reasonably proportional under the circumstances as evaluated by a reasonable person in response to the threat. But, if the response of the person making the threat with the weapon was as a result of actions in which the person threatened with the weapon was the true aggressor, then the privilege of self-defense would be forfeited. In real life, good attorneys for the parties could almost certainly solicit and call attention to additional facts not mentioned in the question that would further muddy the waters and raise additional claims, charges, and defenses to claims beyond the ten listed above. I could analyze each of these issues on the facts in depth as best I could with references to statutes and case law (under a body of law other than U.K. law anyway), which would take a few lengthy and heavily researched paragraphs each that would take a fair amount of time each to prepare, but I won't. A full analysis would help you weigh the odds a little better, and if I was a lawyer of a party in this situation, I would do that since every little edge counts in litigation and negotiations of settlements. But even if I did that, it would still leave a lot of uncertainty regarding the final resolution of these questions on the merits. Decision-Making Regarding Bringing Claims The traffic and criminal charges would be brought or not brought largely in the discretion of the Crown attorney or some other government official. It is most likely that a government official making that decision is doing so because the offense was referred to them by the police officer who responded to the scene, or a police officer who received an informal complaint (as opposed to a civil court filing) from one of the parties, or through a complaint delivered directly to the prosecuting authority by an alleged victim. A prosecutor doesn't have to bring claims just because someone asks them to, and doesn't have to bring all possible claims even if some are pursued. The parties themselves would decide whether or not to bring civil claims against each other. Whoever is sued first would make the decision in the context of knowing that they will be a party to a civil lawsuit whether or not they bring civil claims of their own. Possible Forums The traffic offense would probably be resolved in one court. The criminal charges against the person making the threats would be resolved in another court. The criminal charges against the person who hit the car door would be resolved probably in the same court but in a different case, possibly with a different judge. The civil claims would be resolved in yet another court, probably with a different judge, although probably in a single case with the first person to make it to court as the Plaintiff and the other party as a Defendant bringing counterclaims against the Plaintiff. The civil claims might also involve other parties (e.g. the owner of the vehicles in question if not identical to the persons driving the cars at the time of the incidents). Issue Preclusion Some final decisions on the merits in some cases would resolve the outcome of other cases as a matter of law, other final determinations in some cases would not be binding on the other cases as a matter of law because burdens of proof are different, or the legal issue evaluated is not identical, or because other rules (like a rule against a traffic court decision resulting in a binding determination on civil liability for negligence) would apply. The exact rules are rather arcane and there are quite a few permutations of how it come up, but it is important to be aware that these kinds of rules are out there, exist, and would have to be analyzed by the parties as a matter of litigation tactics. Even The &quot;Legal Issues&quot; Are Fact Intensive Inquiries Almost all of the legal theories implicated above involve broad legal standards in which a lot of the substantive question of what is or is not legal is delegated to the finder of fact in a manner that cannot be reviewed on appeal. For example, in a negligence case related to damage to an automobile, even if there is a videotape and there is 100% agreement on precisely what happened, whether that conduct constitutes &quot;negligence&quot; that breaches the duty of care owed by a reasonable person to the general public to protect them from harm, is legally considered a &quot;question of fact&quot; to be determined by a judge on a case by case basis, rather than a &quot;question of law&quot; which will always have the same outcome and is subject to review by an appellate court if the judge gets it wrong. A similar &quot;reasonable person&quot; standard which must be resolved with a highly fact intensive inquiry that could be resolved more than one way by two different judges or juries hearing precisely the same facts and finding the same witnesses and evidence to be credible in exactly the same way, with both upheld on appeal, applies to the self-defense legal theory. This self-defense issue could also conceivably, based upon the order in which cases were tried and their resolution, be resolved one way in a criminal case and a different way in a civil case between the parties. In the same vein, when a threat is imminent is a highly subjective determination that could be resolved in a &quot;legally correct&quot; way that is not subject to being overturned on appeal on precisely the same facts, with precisely the same determinations as to credibility and weight of the evidence, by two different judges or juries. Again, the substantive question of whether particular conduct is or is not illegal is a &quot;question of fact&quot; that can't be resolved in the absence of a trial on the merits in a particular case before a particular finder of fact. Bottom Line The facts provided in the question aren't sufficiently detailed to provide a definitely correct answer to this question. Indeed, the nature of the facts is such that even an perfectly detailed factual statement regarding what happened might not be enough to definitively determine who has civil liability to whom, and to determine what charges each defendant is guilty of. Different judges and jurors could reasonably come to different legally correct conclusions in a case like this one when faced with precisely the same facts and resolving all issues of credibility and the weight of the evidence in precisely the same way. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the same facts would be analyzed with respect to different legal theory analysis in different forums by different people, when there is not, as a general rule (although there is in some cases) any mechanism for compelling those decisions to be made consistently on outcome determinative evaluations of the same facts regarding what was reasonable for the parties to do under the circumstances. The notion that a judge is just an umpire, and that every competent judge acting in good faith will always resolve a case presenting the same facts in the same way is a myth. This simply isn't true, even in the U.K. where the judiciary is (as a consequence of how the system for appointment and retention of judges is designed) not nearly as partisan and politicized as it is in the United States. The outcomes of even fairly simple cases in many cases, like the one in this question, are intrinsically and irreducibly uncertain in common law legal systems. The range of possible outcomes from a best case scenario to a worst case scenario, for each party in this fact pattern, is very wide. A desire to tame the myriad uncertainties involved for all parties, and the desire to avoid multiple time consuming and uncertain court proceedings arising out of the same incident, is one of the reasons that it is very common for civil lawsuits to settle out of court without a trial, and for criminal cases to be resolved by an agreement of the prosecution and the defense (sometimes reached even before charges are filed).
Police officers can lie to you He asked to search your car. He’s allowed to do this. You said no. You’re allowed to do this. He lied to you when he said he would get the K9 to search the car - this would not be legal. But he’s allowed to tell you lies. You made an admission of criminal activity. He now has probable cause to search. He legally searched, confirmed your admission and booked you. Seems legit to me.
I think it would depend on how a jury viewed the "challenge" to her audience. The general rule for self-defense in Texas is that the person needs to reasonably believe that force is immediately necessary to protect herself from someone else's use of force. I think a jury would find it reasonable to believe that someone forcefully attempting to steal your gun was planning to use it against you. More importantly, the law generally presumes that that belief is reasonable if the person is being robbed, assuming that she isn't otherwise engaged in criminal activity. Since openly carrying an AR-15 is -- as far as I know -- legal in Texas, I think she'd probably be fine. But: The law also says that the use of force is not justified when a person consents to the other person's use of force, or if the person has provoked the other person. So now you have the question of whether the student's challenge constitutes a provocation or consent to the use of force. I think you can make a decent argument for provocation, which means that "the defendant did some act or used some words intended to and calculated to bring on the difficulty in order to have a pretext for inflicting injury." Neal v. State, No. 12-14-00158-CR, 2016 WL 1446138, at *11 (Tex. App. Apr. 13, 2016). You might also make out a decent argument for consent, which doesn't necessarily seem to require that the parties exactly spell out the rules of engagement, just that there is some kind of agreement between the two parties. In one case, for instance, a defendant tried to argue that a fight had gone beyond the rules because one party used a chokehold and knocked the other out. But the court said that the only actual rule agreed to was that there would be no weapons used. Padilla v. State, No. 03-07-00513-CR, 2008 WL 5423139, at *2 (Tex. App. Dec. 31, 2008). That makes me think that as long as there's consent to some kind of fight, you don't necessarily need rules, though you do need to abide by them if you agree to them. So what's the scope of consent in this case? If we say that she's agreed to the use of force by challenging people to take something from her, and she hasn't said how you can do it, can you do it by any means you choose? I don't think a court would let someone shoot her to get it, but maybe they would be allowed to pry it out of her hands. So all of that is a long way of saying that this is a tricky question, and that any decision would probably depend a lot on the specific facts of who she was talking to, what exactly she was saying, how she was carrying the gun, and so on.
I think it's important to keep in mind the essence of your actions. @Mowzer gave a great answer on the matter in hand, but I'd like to add a point of view. Is it illegal to eat while driving? Like pointed out by @Mowzer, if no law prohibits it, it's allowed by default (lots of countries have this premise). But what about the consequences of your actions? Maybe there's no law against eating in the car, but there sure is one in my country that specific says that you are not allowed to drive without using both hands in the wheel. The only exception to this rule is to take out your hand from the wheel to use the stick to change gears. Another point of view to add is the liability. Let's say you're minding your own business while driving and a lunatic trying to commit suicide jumps in front of your car. It's a pretty straight-forward case, you have no reason to be blamed. Now, let's add to the same scenario your snack; with a small change, you are now facing a accident that may have been caused by reckless driving (another thing commonly illegal). To sum up, the law is not really like math that have axioms that determine true or false statements without any distinguishment. That's why every case is single handled in the law by it's particularities.
Deliberately causing an accident is illegal. However, in some (probably many) jurisdictions there is a &quot;necessity&quot; defense against criminal charges. In Washington it goes like this: Necessity is a defense to a charge of (fill in crime) if (1) the defendant reasonably believed the commission of the crime was necessary to avoid or minimize a harm; (2) harm sought to be avoided was greater than the harm resulting from a violation of the law; (3) the threatened harm was not brought about by the defendant; and (4) no reasonable legal alternative existed. The defendant has the burden of proving this defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Preponderance of the evidence means that you must be persuaded, considering all the evidence in the case, that it is more probably true than not true. If you find that the defendant has established this defense, it will be your duty to return a verdict of not guilty [as to this charge]. It is possible, if B is attempting to kill the pedestrian, that you have defense of others available as well.
I couldn't find any decisions on CanLII where someone was punished for a fictitious or out-of-province front plate in Alberta, however the Traffic Safety Act states the following: 1(1)(s) “licence plate” means a licence plate that is issued under this Act and includes an object that is recognized under this Act as a licence plate; (9) For the purposes of sections 1(1)(rr) and 11.1 and Part 8, licence plate includes a licence plate issued in another jurisdiction. 53(1) Except as otherwise permitted under this Act, a person shall not do any of the following: (b) display on a motor vehicle or trailer a licence plate other than a licence plate issued or authorized for use on that vehicle; (c) operate or park a motor vehicle or trailer on a highway with an expired licence plate displayed on it; (Part 8) 168(1) If a peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe (a) that a vehicle is displaying licence plates that (i) were not issued for that vehicle . . . the peace officer may seize and take possession of the licence plates displayed on that vehicle. 169(1) A peace officer may arrest a person without warrant if the peace officer, on reasonable grounds, believes . . . (2) For the purposes of subsection (1), the following are the provisions for which a person may be arrested without a warrant: (c) section 53(1)(b) relating to the displaying of a licence plate other than one authorized under this Act; While the connection of the extended definition in s.9 to s.53(1) is a little vague, the connection to Part 8 is not, and therefore I can confidently say that the Act clearly states it is a violation to use out-of-province plates on the front of a vehicle. The plates can be seized and you may be arrested. It may further be a violation of the BC Motor Vehicle Act if/when you travel there.
The policeman ordered, right as he took a step out of his car &quot;Turn it off!&quot; - which is a lawful demand to prevent the biker from possibly kicking the gas and running. As the driver did not seem to comply (from the policeman's PoV) during his walk over to the bike, he enforced the order himself by turning off the bike and confiscating the key for the moment. Having made it safe that the driver couldn't leg it, he guided traffic around him so he could get to the side of the road. We don't know what happened after the driver reached the curb to be lectured and/or arrested, the bike could be impounded or the confiscation might be temporary. So all we can do here is discuss the action of demanding that a motor vehicle be turned off, the doing of such and taking the keys. Demanding a vehicle to be shut off is standard procedure in police stop, as it is ensuring the safety of everybody involved. In a somewhat recent case (trying to find it again!), a driver did not shut off the car and had to stand on the brake to keep it where it was. As commands came conflicting (keep your hands where we can see them, get out of the car!) and he could not comply or the car would jump forward and ram somewhere, things escalated and the driver was shot. But back to the first step. Was the stop lawful? ACLU in NY tells us: Police may stop and briefly detain you only if there is reasonable suspicion that you committed, are committing, or are about to commit a crime. Don’t bad-mouth a police officer or run away, even if you believe what is happening is unreasonable. That could lead to your arrest. There was a crime committed: Splitting is illegal in NY (among others: Section 1122, overtaking on the right), so the stop was justified under NY CPL 140.50. From my own experience, it is not uncommon for bikers to try to evade police by swerving back into traffic and using their higher mobility to get away. On its face, this makes it reasonable to demand the bike be shut off as the policeman advanced, and I'd like to congratulate the officer for taking the less escalating step and just turning the bike off himself on the noncompliance instead of drawing his gun and possibly escalating it to a use of force. Most lawyers suggest to drivers pulled over to do things akin to &quot;After you brought your car to a complete stop [on the curb], roll down your window and shut off the engine&quot;. Like this one. Possibly confiscating the keys might be an overreach by the policeman, but the demand to turn it off clearly is not.
I suspect that you would not be convicted in the present case, because the jury would be sympathetic to the plight of the person being dragged out and unsympathetic to the behavior of the draggers. However, we should set aside the emotional elements of a jury trial and focus on legal principles. The basic question is whether a person has the right to use force to defend against an unlawful battery: "a person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another". This right to defense also extends to defense of others. But it has to appear to be to unlawful, which is to say, you have to reasonably believe that the force used against the victim is unlawful. If a couple of thugs try to drag a person away, then an observer probably has a reasonable belief that this is an unlawful battery. But if a couple of police officers are observed dragging a person away (arresting him), apparently acting officially, the force used (up to a point) is apparently lawful and would not constitute battery of the victim. For defensive force against police to be lawful, the forced used by the police must be excessive. The outcome then depends on what a reasonable person would conclude (this is where the jury or judge makes a rather subjective decision). If a reasonable person would conclude that the assailants are acting lawfully in arresting the person, then a higher bar must be clear to justifiably use force in defense of others. Wearing a jacket that says "Police" favors the "appears lawful" side (though if you happened to know for a fact that the person wearing the jacket is not a police officer, then the "police exception" would not be applicable). In the relevant case, the facts point to the appearance of a lawful arrest (even if were to turn out to be judged unlawful). In the case that this is an apparent arrest, it would have to be the case that a reasonable person would find the force used to be excessive. Generally speaking, force used by officers is held to be reasonable, except in some cases where it is not. See for example the matter of Eric Garner, where the officers involved were not indicted. On the third hand, in this case, it might matter what the actual legal status of the "officers" is (they are not Chicago police).