Who might be criminally liable for Corporate Manslaughter?
Corporate manslaughter prosecutions will apply to the corporate body itself, not particular individuals. Senior managers and owners of businesses are not personally prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. They may be prosecuted for other offences related to failures in health and safety management. This might include gross negligence manslaughter, as well as health and safety offences. Corporate manslaughter law does not remove liability in such instances, and individuals may still be prosecuted where there is enough evidence and it’s considered in the public interest. Individual members of staff and directors may be called as witnesses in a criminal trial for corporate manslaughter.
How is corporate manslaughter proven?
For corporate manslaughter to be proven it will need to be shown that:
- The defendant is a qualifying organisation.
- The organisation had a duty of care to the deceased person.
- There was a gross breach of that duty of care by the organisation.
- A substantial element of that was the way in which its activities were managed by senior management.
In most workplace incidents there is usually a range of factors that led to the fatality. Fault will usually be attributed to a range of different elements coming together. Demonstrating that senior management failure played a substantial cause in the duty of care breach is the biggest challenge to overcome in proving corporate manslaughter cases. As a result, the bulk of convictions have involved smaller companies, where a senior manager connected to the gross breach of duty of care, could easily be identified.
What are the potential penalties?
Conviction of corporate manslaughter carries an unlimited fine. This fine must be enough to punish the organisation, but not large enough to put the company out of business or inadvertently cause harm to other employees. Guidelines suggest that the fine should constitute 5% of the company’s annual turnover, followed by 10% if there are any subsequent incidents. This means that it can rise to several million pounds for larger companies. Prosecution costs may also be awarded against the organisation, and courts have the ability to impose ‘remedial orders’ on companies that publicise the nature of the conviction.
