CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER – FITTING THE PUNISHMENT TO THE CRIME

April 6 saw the second anniversary of the coming into force of the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2008 in the United Kingdom. At its inception, the Corporate Manslaughter Act was promoted as ground-breaking legislation, that would be the toughest in the world and which would ensure that organisations would be brought to justice where poor standards of management had resulted in fatalities.

The reality has proved rather different; since the Act came into force there has only been one charge of corporate manslaughter brought and the trial of that case is not due to be heard until July of this year at the earliest. Moreover that charge relates to a very small company and it is generally considered that the case will not produce a decision that gives significant guidance to companies on the standards they will be expected to meet under the Act.

Nevertheless, it is clear that corporate manslaughter offences will in future be treated with the utmost seriousness. New sentencing guidelines for corporate manslaughter and health & safety offences causing death were finalised earlier this year, which set out the parameters for setting fines. The guidelines suggest that for corporate manslaughter the appropriate fine will seldom be less than £500,000 and may be measured in millions of pounds.

The same new guidelines have significantly changed the level of fines for health and safety offences. Where breaches of health and safety legislation are proved to have caused death the guidelines indicated that an appropriate fine will not be less than £100,000 and may well run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

While an organisation’s ability to pay a fine will be considered, the guidelines are very clear that a fixed correlation between the fine and either turnover or profit of the offending organisation is not appropriate; the intention is that a fine is intended to inflict painful punishment.

If you would like any further information or advice on the issues covered in this article please contact Darren Smith.