Absolute liability

Absolute liability is a standard of legal liability found in tort and criminal law of various legal jurisdictions.

To be convicted of an ordinary crime, in certain jurisdictions, a person must not only have committed a criminal action, but also have had a deliberate intention or guilty mind (mens rea). In a crime of strict liability (criminal) or absolute liability, a person could be guilty even if there was no intention to commit a crime. The difference between strict and absolute liability is whether the defence of a mistake of fact is available: in a crime of absolute liability, a mistake of fact is not a defence. Strict or Absolute Liability- also can arise from inherently dangerous activities or defective products that are likely to result in a harm to another, regardless of protection taken. Negligence is not required to be proven. Example: Owning a pet rattle snake.

The Australian Criminal Code Act 1995 defines absolute liability in Division 86, subsection 2:

(1) If a law that creates an offence provides that the offence is an offence of absolute liability:

Regulatory bodies tend to favour the approach of declaring offences to be strict or absolute liability, because it makes it easier to prosecute people: there is no longer a requirement to demonstrate that the defendant was deliberately intending to commit an offence. Jurists consider such a mechanism to be a blunt instrument, and recommend its use only in limited circumstances:

Absolute liability is used for certain regulatory offences in which it is necessary for individuals engaged in potentially hazardous or harmful activity to exercise extreme, and not merely reasonable, care. Such offences as exceeding 60 kilometres per hour in a 60 kilometre zone, causing pollution to waters, selling alcohol to underage persons, refusing or failing to submit to breath testing and publishing a name in breach of a suppression order. In these cases, the courts accepted that the benefits to the community overrode any potential negative impact on the accused person.

In Canada, absolute liability is one of three types of criminal or regulatory offences. In R. v. City of Sault Ste-Marie, the Supreme Court of Canada defined an absolute liability offence as an offence "where it is not open to the accused to exculpate himself by showing that he was free of fault." This can be compared to a strict liability offence (where an accused can raise the defence of due diligence) and mens rea offences (where the prosecutor has to prove that the accused had some positive state of mind).

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