Hi Bear

ATTENTION READERS -- THE INFORMATION THAT FOLLOWS IS OFFERED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, IT IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU NEED LEGAL ADVICE, CONSULT A QUALIFIED CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER IN YOUR JURISDICTION.

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Hi Bear -- Since all my legal experience is with the U.S. system (and the state statutes of one state, mostly), I'm not in the best position to answer your question. But since English common law formed the basis of the U.S. criminal-justice system, what I have to say probably isn't too far off the mark -- you might want to check with a local solicitor or barrister or LEO about the particulars in your community.

Here in the U.S. there are several types of statute that would likely prohibit mutual-consent fights between groups of people.

The first one that comes to mind is "affray," which is an old common-law offense. Basically, affray is a mutual-consent fight between two or more participants which results in "terror to the public." (I suspect the "terror to the public" part is meant to distinguish full-on fights from friendly horseplay and athletic competition). I used to hate dealing with affray cases because they invariably involved fights between groups of teenagers, all of whom claimed to be acting in self-defense, all of whom had attitude to spare, and all of whom wanted to go to trial. Yeesh. Interestingly, I never went to trial on an affray case -- they were often dropped by the prosecutor, probably because most/all of the witnesses were defendants and didn't have any credibility.

A similar offense is dueling, which is basically mutual-consent fighting with weapons.

Then you've got a couple of potentially-relevant offenses that don't require that a blow be thrown --

One is disorderly conduct, a.k.a. disturbing the peace. This is a real catch-all charge, which I have seen applied by LEOs to all sorts of situations. The cynical among us (not me, of course!) think of the Dis Con charge as one of the first options for annoyed LEOs who have a P.O.P. (Pissing Off the Police) case and need a handy statute to use.

Finally, there's inciting a riot, which I think of as a felony version of disturbing the peace. It typically involves an "inciter" plus one or more "audience members" who are being incited. This is a charge that's often used when the LEOs disperse a big group of people who are getting dangerously riled-up by a few loudmouths. I handled a case once where a young man was charged with inciting, after supposedly getting into a fight in front of a crowd of a couple of hundred teenagers after a high-school football game and then getting into an ugly shouting match with a couple of local cops who were unlucky enough to be first on the scene. It was one of the few times I took depositions from LEOs and they basically said things like, "I was scared s***less" and "I was afraid I was going to die." Despite the adversarial situation I was in, I felt a lot of respect for those LEOs. How many of us could deal with that kind of pressure on the job? Not this kid.

I hope this was some help.

E.L.