The UK’s First Corporate Manslaughter Case Postponed Until October
By: Ainsley Brown
The first prosecution under the UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 has been adjourned until October.
The Act seeks to make convictions of companies with respect to deaths at the workplace much easier. Under English law a corporation as a juridical person is capable of both committing and being convicted of crimes. However, as an artificial non-human legal creation, a corporation can only act through people. Thus, from both a legal and a practical perspective this made it very difficult to even get a corporation charged much less convicted. This was in large measure due to the difficulty in assigning the requisite mens rea of many crimes to a corporation. It was far too easy for corporations to disavow the acts of an employee/servant by saying: yes they did act but it was not the act of the corporation it was their own.
Corporations were able to get away with this defense because there was often insufficient evidence to prove that the employee/servant was of such seniority as to constitute the controlling mind of the corporation. And even where such seniority could be found the corporation would simply claim that while the employee/servant under normal circumstances is a controlling mind, he/she was not acting in such a capacity when the death was caused.
But not anymore.
The Act makes it an indictable offense if the way in which a corporation’s activities are managed or organized caused the death of a person that amounts to a gross breach of duty of care owed to the deceased. Therefore, corporations can now no longer disavow the acts of an employee/servant, senior or not, as not belonging to the controlling mind of the corporation. The presence or absence of a controlling mind while an important factor is now no longer the deciding factor.
Cotsworld Geotechnical Holdings Ltd has been charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of a young geologist when a trench in Stroud, Gloucestershire collapsed on him.
As a penalty the corporation faces an unlimited fine or has to publicize its failure or can be ordered to remedy the breach.
I find the existance of just an act quite ingreguing and I look forward to how it will be used in practice. Speaking of the case mentioned in your blog, why can’t the company be charged with failure to uphold proper safety standards, a neglagence resulting in death?
Also I see you refer specifically to the UK are there other nations with similar Acts? And if so have any of them had success trying or convicting a company under said act?