Corporate manslaughter in English law

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Corporate manslaughter is a

manslaughter, although all defendants in that case were acquitted.[1]

Theory and historical development

Main article: Corporate manslaughter

The

health and safety are delegated to junior managers who are not "controlling minds".[2][3]

On 6 March 1987, 193 people died when the

P&O, stating:[4]

All concerned in management ... were at fault in that all must be regarded as sharing responsibility for the failure of management. From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness.

There was significant institutional resistance to the appropriateness of using the criminal law in general, and homicide charges in particular in this type of situation.[citation needed] Judicial review of the coroner's inquest persuaded the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring manslaughter charges against P&O European Ferries and seven employees, but the trial judge ruled that there was no evidence that one sufficiently senior member of the company's management could be said to have been negligent.

A subsequent appeal confirmed that corporate manslaughter is a charge known to English criminal law, and with the revival of

Great Western Trains following the Southall rail crash
collapsed because "the Crown was not in a position to satisfy the doctrine of identification" (Turner J). Only the company itself and the train driver, Mr Larry Harrison, were prosecuted. Since the train driver is not someone of a managerial or directorial level, the case against him was dismissed in the opening arguments. Because the only other defendant was GWT, a corporation, this meant that it was impossible to identify a controlling mind for the purposes of holding an individual personally liable for manslaughter.

In English law, proving corporate manslaughter and securing a conviction of an individual where the corporation involved is a small concern are easier where it is easier to identify a "controlling mind" (in R v OLL Ltd, 1994, about the

Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
.

Following R v. Prentice,[5] a breach of duty amounts to 'gross negligence' when there is:

indifference to an obvious risk of injury to health; actual foresight of the risk coupled with the determination nevertheless to run it; appreciation of the risk coupled with an intention to avoid it but also coupled with such a high degree of negligence in the attempted avoidance as the jury consider justifies conviction, and inattention or failure to advert to a serious risk which goes "beyond inadvertence" in respect of an obvious and important matter which the defendant's duty demanded he should address.

The

involuntary manslaughter found that the gross negligence formula overcomes the problems of having to find one particular officer who has the mens rea for the offence and allows emphasis to be placed on the company's attitude to safety.[6]
This question would only arise where the company has chosen to enter a field of activity that carries a risk to others, such as transport, manufacture or medical care. The steps the company has taken to discharge the "duty of safety" and the systems devised for running its business, will be directly relevant. Although only expressed as a provisional view, it is significant that the Law Commission echoes here the recognition of corporate safety systems voiced in the Seaboard case. Thus, a real tension is exposed between the paradigm of criminal culpability based on individual responsibility and the increasing recognition of the potential for harm inherent in large scale corporate activity.

The government issued a consultation paper in 2000, proposing reforms to the law to implement the recommendations of the Law Commission. A draft Corporate Manslaughter

Act of Parliament to be passed in 2005/6 to widen the scope for prosecutions for corporate manslaughter.[citation needed
]

New legislation from 2008

Main article: Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

A Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill was introduced to the

not guilty plea, rising to 10% of turnover.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b R. v. P & O Ferries (Dover) Ltd (1991) 93 Cr App Rep 72 (citation explained).
  2. ^ Tesco v. Nattrass [1972] AC 153, HL
  3. ^ Attorney-General's Reference (No.2 of 1999) [2000] QB 796, CA
  4. ^ Department of Transport (1987), The Merchant Shipping Act 1894, mv Herald of Free Enterprise, Report of Court No 8074 (Sheen Report), London: HMSO
  5. ^ (1993) 3 WLR 937
  6. Law Commission
    Report 237, 1996.
  7. ^ Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, Parliament website.
  8. ^ "Understanding the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007" (PDF). Ministry of Justice. Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  9. ^ "Consultation Paper on Sentencing for Corporate Manslaughter" (PDF). Sentencing Guidelines Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 February 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2007.
  10. ^ "Companies face record corporate manslaughter fines". Solicitors' Journal. 2007. Retrieved 12 December 2007.[permanent dead link]

Bibliography

External links
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