Corporate Manslaughter

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 became law on 6 April 2008.  The new law does not do away with the old law but merely builds on the foundations that it laid.  It creates a new offence of corporate manslaughter (in England and Wales) and corporate homicide (in Scotland) but essentially these are one of the same.

The new law purports to make organisations liable to prosecution if its activities and the way that those activities are managed, causes a persons death and that amounts to a gross breach of its duty of care.

Where the new law departs from the previous law, is its concept of holding “senior management” responsible.  Although the new law attempts to clarify the concept of senior management, only time will tell as to who or what level of management (if at all) that will actually catch.  It is quite possible that when it comes to making decisions and managing those decisions, the individual employee’s who are responsible for a certain activity are caught by s.1 Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 thereby creating difficulties for the organisation.  There is also the potential for personal liability for an individual for the offence of involuntary gross negligence manslaughter. 

The new law will really allow the authorities (HSE, Police and CPS) to look at a wide range of activities in order to assess whether they have been caught by the new legislation. It is a matter of interpretation at this stage. There may be clear examples of  the death of a construction worker on site, or cases which are less clear where a bus driver is responsible for killing a child.  These types of cases are now to be looked at and scrutinised more carefully under the new 2007 Act. It will mean there are more indictments for corporate death and more individuals will be charged. A careful approach needs to be adopted from the time that first call to the police is made right through to the matters being put before the Court.

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