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Corporate manslaughter
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 created a new offence of “corporate manslaughter”. The legislation aimed to make it easier to prosecute companies and other large organisations when gross failures in their management of health and safety have led to a death. The Act is the result of persistent campaigning by safety campaigners and unions.
The law removed a key obstacle in previous prosecutions, where a company could only be convicted of manslaughter if a “directing mind” (such as a director) at the top of the company was also personally liable.
The Act also lifted Crown immunity to prosecution for manslaughter. It applies to companies and other corporate bodies in the public and private sector, government departments, police forces and certain unincorporated bodies, such as partnerships, where these are employers. However, it does not apply to the armed forces or to the operations of companies registered in the UK if a fatality occurs abroad.
The Act allows a jury to convict an organisation for both the offence of corporate manslaughter and for health and safety offences. This allows company directors to be prosecuted for a health and safety offence at the same time that the company is prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, although in practice, few directors have been brought to trial for health and safety breaches.
Potential penalties include an unlimited fine, a remedial order or a publicity order. Sentencing Council guidelines set out that fines for organisations found guilty of corporate manslaughter should be measured in millions of pounds and should not generally be below £500,000. However, the first prosecution for corporate manslaughter, against Cotswold Geotechnical Services in February 2011, resulted in a fine of only £385,000, over the death of geologist, Alexander Wright:
Alexander Wright, 27, had been left working alone in a 3.5m deep trench which was not supported by timbers after the managing director of the company, Cotswold Geotechnical Services, had left for the day. Mr Wright was taking soil samples for a housing development when the trench caved in, burying him completely. He died of asphyxiation. The Judge allowed the company, described in Court as being in a “parlous financial state” to pay the fine spread over ten years and said a larger fine would cause the company to be liquidated, with the loss of four jobs. The company’s subsequent appeal against conviction was unsuccessful.
JMW Farms Limited (Co. Armagh) became the first company in Northern Ireland to be convicted under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (CMHA) 2007. On 8 May 2012, it was fined a record £187,500 plus £13,000 costs at Belfast’s Laganside Crown Court for health and safety failings that led to the death of employee Robert Wilson:
Robert Wilson died on 15 November 2010 while working in the meal-mixing plant on the company’s pig farm at Tynan, Co. Armagh after being struck by a metal bin which fell from a forklift being driven by company director Mark Wright. A joint police and Health and Safety Executive (NI) investigation found that the bin had not been attached or integrated with the forklift. In addition, it was not possible to insert the lifting forks into the sleeves of the bin as the forks were too large and incorrectly spaced.
And in July 2012 Lion Steel Equipment, a Cheshire manufacturing firm, was fined almost half a million pounds for corporate manslaughter following the death of a worker. It was the third company in the UK to be found guilty of such an offence when it pleaded guilty to the charge. The firm was issued with a fine of £480,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £84,000 by Manchester Crown Court. This case involved the death of Steven Berry, who died after falling through a fragile roof panel at a site in Hyde, Cheshire in May 2008. Individual charges of gross negligence manslaughter against the firm’s three directors were dropped in return for the company pleading guilty to corporate manslaughter.
Although there have only been three convictions under the Act to date, over recent months the CPS has announced new charges against the following companies:
• garden nursery operator, PS & JE Ward, will face a corporate manslaughter charge following the death of Grzegorz Krystian Pieton. He was killed on 15 July 2010 when the metal hydraulic lift trailer he was towing touched an overhead power line at the company’s Belmont Nursery in Norfolk;
• both the manager, Malcolm Fyfield, and the company which operated the Gleision Colliery, MNS Mining Ltd, will face manslaughter charges. This follows the incident in which miners Charles Breslin, Philip Hill, Garry Jenkins and David Powell were killed in September 2011 when the mine they were working in was flooded by 500,000 gallons of water in September 2011;
• a corporate manslaughter charge will be brought concerning the death of 11-year-old Mari-Simon Cronje, who died during a birthday celebration at the Princes Sporting Club in Bedfont, Middlesex on 11 September 2010. She died after she fell from a banana boat and was hit by the boat that had been towing it; and
• Mobile Sweepers (Reading) Limited will be charged with corporate manslaughter following the death of Malcolm Hinton who died from crush injuries after working on a repair beneath a road-sweeping truck in 2012.
In addition, international law firm Pinsent Masons recently reported that the number of new corporate manslaughter cases opened by the CPS increased by 40% to 63 in 2012, with 56 cases currently being investigated.