indicated a precise spot. The appellant drove forward towards him and stopped the car with the offside wheel on Morris’s left foot. ‘Get off, you are on my foot’, said the officer. ‘Fuck you, you can wait’, said the appellant. The engine of the car stopped running. Morris repeated several times ‘Get off my foot’. The appellant said reluctantly, ‘OK, man, OK’ and then slowly turned on the ignition of the vehicle and reversed it off the officer’s foot. The appellant had either turned the ignition off to stop the engine or turned it off after the engine had stopped running. The justices at quarter sessions on those facts were left in doubt as to whether the mounting of the wheel on to the officer’s foot was deliberate or accidental. They were satisfied, however, beyond all reasonable doubt that the appellant ‘knowingly, provocatively and unnecessarily allowed the wheel to remain on the foot after the officer said, ‘Get off, you are on my foot’. They found that on those facts an assault was proved.

ABSTRACT

James J: ... The sole question is whether the prosecution proved facts which in law amounted to an assault.

[Counsel for the appellant] ... contends that on the finding of the justices the initial mounting of the wheel could not be an assault and that the act of the wheel mounting the foot came to an end without there being any mens rea. It is argued that thereafter there was no act on the part of the appellant which could constitute an actus reus but only the omission or failure to remove the wheel as soon as he was asked. That failure, it is said, could not in law be an assault, nor could it in law provide the necessary mens rea to convert the original act of mounting the foot into an assault.