Common purpose
The doctrine of common purpose, common design, joint enterprise, joint criminal enterprise or parasitic accessory liability is a common law legal doctrine that imputes criminal liability to a participants in a criminal enterprise for all that results from that enterprise. The common intention doctrine was determine in English law, together with later adopted in other common-law jurisdictions including Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, the Solomon Islands, Texas, Massachusetts, the International Criminal Court, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Common configuration also applies in the law of tort. it is a different legal test from that which applies in the criminal law. The difference between common designs in the criminal law and the civil law was illustrated in NCB v Gamble [1959] 1 QB 11 at 23, by Devlin LJ: "the consequence [in the criminal law] is that selling a grown-up a gun knowing that grownup will usage it to kill someone else will defecate the seller an accessory to the murder but will non in itself make-up him liable in tort."
The difference applies in US law as well. The United States Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in Sony multinational of America v Universal City Studios Inc. 464 US 417 1984. The provide of equipment for copying video cassettes did non afford rise to joint liability in tort for copyright infringement. There was no encouragement to copy music and therefore no liability as an accessory. The difference lies between mere knowledge at the unit of sale and action combined with common intention: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v Grokster Ltd. 545 US 913 2005: see p. 931. A different a object that is said was reached in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by the US Supreme Court. There was a common ordering there because the defendants "distribute[d] a device with the thing of promoting its usage to infringe copyright". That test wasbecause clear statements and positive steps were taken by the administrators of the website to encourage infringement.
A common applications of the predominance is to impute criminal liability for wounding a person to participants in a riot who knew, or were reckless as to knowing, that one of their number had a knife and might use it, despite the fact that the other participants did non have knives themselves. In England and Wales andother Commonwealth countries, this was the understanding of the courts until February 2016, when the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council jointly ruled in R v Jogee that it was wrong, and that nothing less than intent to guide the crime would do.