Examples Of Criminal Negligence

Criminal Negligence

Criminal negligence can be defined as carelessly acting without taking reasonable care and putting others like in danger. The principle of Criminal negligence applies to medical practitioner when he shows gross negligence in the treatment of patient and ultimately leading to physical injury to the patient and in some case even death of the patient. The doctors are not being held criminally responsible for the patient’s death unless there is some negligence on his part while treating the patient. The most important factor to prosecute any medical practitioner under the medical negligence is the degree of negligence.

The Supreme Court in Jacob Mathew v State of Punjab has provided some grounds relating the degree of negligence

The operation was not a complex or complicated operation. On investigation it was found that the cause of death was “not introducing a cuffed end tracheal tube of proper size to prevent the aspiration of the blood from the wound in the respiratory passage” . The Supreme Court held that even if it to be assumed that the Appellant was negligent, he would not be criminally liable as the alleged act was not grossly negligent. At the most the accused can be liable for negligence in tort for damages and nothing more than that. The Court further expressed that if the liability of the medical practitioner were to be extended to the criminal law then it would result into fear amongst the medical practitioner to be held criminally liable in the case of slight mishap and would restrict them to treat the patients to best of their ability. The Court also went on to state that extending medical practitioners liability to criminal law would affect the society at large and would shake the mutual confidence between the doctor and the

In the present case the principle of Res Ipsa Loquitor(the thing speaks for itself) is applied. Here in this case the wife of the complainant was treated for wrongly treated for typhoid fever wherein she had malaria fever and due to this she got wrong medication which resulted into further aggravation of her health. The Supreme Court in its final verdict awarded the compensation of Rs 2 Lakh to the complainant.

The most important element in case of gross negligence is that prima facie case must be established before the court, this principle was first observed in the case of Dr. Anand R. Nerkar vs. Smt. Rahimbi Shaikh Madar The Court held that cases where professionals like doctors, lawyers are involved and a criminal complaint is filed against them the court must be slow in entertaining such application if there isn’t adequate material before it, because one case can result into disastrous consequences like end of career and reputation of a