It was the majority view that corporates could evoke a defence based on the relative distance from their core.
But if in this case the jury accepted a defence based on the medical evidence, what about all other wrongdoing?
Shawn, who was educated at private schools before going to Harvard and Oxford, posits a defence based on sincerity.
When the prosecution saw that Vorster's comments might lead to a defence based on Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Nel immediately demanded that Pistorius undergo a full psychiatric assessment.
The defendants are claiming the response was authorised, necessary and reasonable, and that guards acted in self defence based on the known history of the boys as "difficult and sometimes dangerous detainees".
They will say that, even if Adebolajo was wrong in this belief, it was for the jury to decide on its merits, and the judge was wrong in law to rule it could not go before them because it did not amount to a defence based on any legal principles.
MI5 is thought to be considering a defence based on its officers' insistence that they had no reason to know that the ISI might have been torturing the men - a position that Pakistani lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan and the UK say beggars belief.
The suit was resolved following a defence based on a contract case involving actress Olivia de Havilland decades before.
After nearly a year of legal battles, the band announced on April 28 , 2009 that the suit had been settled following a defence based on the De Havilland Law.
Honório Hermeto saw this new majority movement as an "attempt ... equal to that of 30 July [1832 coup]." As he had in 1832, Honório Hermeto took up a defence based on the Constitution against this threat to the political system.
