Questions of fact

Most criminal offenses involve a deliberate decision to perform an act that is proscribed by the criminal law. The criminal law requires the state to prove that the defendant committed a guilty act (actus reus), while simultaneously manifesting the necessary mental state (mens rea, or guilty mind) that is specified for that crime. Consider a case in which a person hammers to death a family member and then claims to have been asleep at the time of the attack. Because a guilty act must be voluntary, a question of fact arises concerning the person s consciousness and the effect that impaired consciousness, or indeed unconsciousness, has on voluntariness (4). In addition, consciousness bears on the guilty state of mind and is therefore relevant to the mens rea inquiry. 

POSTMODERNISTS ARE ANTIFOUNDATIONALIST. QUESTIONS OF FACT, TRUTH, CORRECTNESS, VALIDITY AND CLARITY CAN NEITHER BE POSED NOR ANSWERED . 

An organic chemist knows that other groups may be attached to a parent structure. This is true of all parent chemical structures. Though this would be obvious to him, it does not follow that all new compounds so produced would be obvious in the sense of the patent law (26, 38)2 As in a combination, using old elements, the question is whether the alleged invention would have been obvious to one skilled in the art. Invention under this test is a question of fact (32). 

True science deals with nothing but questions of facts... 

Some service providers will need to incur significant capital expenditure in order to comply with the DDA. What is reasonable will depend upon the state and condition of the service provider s premises. A subjective standard will apply when determining what is reasonable under the circumstances at a given location. Whether or not an adjustment is reasonable will ultimately be a question of fact for the courts. 

It is sometimes necessary to distinguish between questions of law and questions of fact. 

A jury will decide only questions of fact. Questions of fact are about events or the state of affairs and may be proved by evidence. Questions of law seek to discover what the law is, and are determined by legal argument. However, the distinction is not always clear-cut. There are more opportunities to appeal on a question of law than on a question of fact. 

Section 28 of the Factories Act 1961 requires an employer (as occupier) to keep floors and passages free from obstruction as far as is reasonably practicable, so that in the Hazards incident Bertha s tripping, her injury, the wire being there, the routine at Hazards, are questions of fact. However the meaning of obstruction, of floor, of reasonably practicable are questions of law. 

Decisions of the superior courts which are not binding are persuasive judicial decisions of other common law countries (see below 1.14, para. 2) are also persuasive. The judgements of inferior courts are mostly on questions of fact and are not strict precedents. 

Beddoes says a near relation of Bergman told him that the greatest of Bergman s discoveries was the discovery of Scheele , a trivial remark long afterwards associated with Davy and Faraday. Dumas says when it is only a question of facts, Scheele is infallible . In theory, Scheele was in much the same position as his contemporaries he followed the great error of Stahl, and held to the theory of phlogiston to the end of his life. Even here, however, he... 

The elaborate structure of cells serves not only to permit association of functions that require integration but also to prevent destructive reactions from acting without restraint. Thus, several enzymes have been found to be separated physically from the bulk of their substrates. Much has been learned about the relation of enzymes to cell structure, but as yet only a small fraction of the known enzymes have been assigned to definite parts of the cell. Many questions of fact and interpretation remain to be answered by future work in this area. 

If we apply this to computers or computing facilities, there is unlikely to be any permanent deprivation of property, unless discs or tapes are permanently removed, damaged or destroyed and it is a question of fact whether aity properly which has been borrowed is returned in such a changed state that it has lost all practical value. Once again therefore, the unauthorized use of a computer is not a special issue, and it would be artificial to make changes solely in this area. 

The court needs to resolve two things. The first is the due care to expect from a defendant. This is referred to as a standard of law because it is broadly and vaguely defined in legal statues, and will be discussed in the following section. Judges, in a jury trial, specify in their instructions to the jury the legal standard of care. However, the jury has to interpret what that standard implies for the actions expected of the defendant. The second issue to be resolved is how the actual conduct of the defendant compares with the expected level of due care. This is a question of fact and is decided by the jury based on the evidence presented. 

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