Courts often wrestle with how many charges may be brought against an accused for a given incident or course of conduct. Here’s the question the court of appeal faced in People v. Newton, case no. G037968 (4th Dist. Sept. 27, 2007): The issue before us appears to be one of first impression: where an accident results in injury to more than one person, and the person causing the accident flees the scene, is there a single violation of section 20001 [hit and run] or are there multiple violations? The answer seemed pretty obvious to me. The driver hit once and ran once, regardless of how many people were injured in…