Corporate manslaughter

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Corporate manslaughter is a term in English law for an act of homicide committed by a company. In general, a legal person is in the same position as a natural person, and may be convicted for committing virtually all offences, under English criminal law. The Court of Appeal confirmed in one of the cases following the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster that a company can in principle commit manslaughter (R. v. P & O Ferries (Dover) Ltd (1991) 93 Cr App Rep 72), although all defendants in that case were acquitted.

The common law test to impose criminal responsibility on a company only arises where there is a "controlling mind" whose actions and intentions can be imputed to the company (that is, a person in control of the company's affairs to a sufficient degree that the company can be fairly be said to think and act through him). In the case of manslaughter, this person also has to be guilty of gross negligence. This requirement has prevented criminal prosecutions in many cases, since in a large company there is often no single person who acts as a "controlling mind", and many issues of health and safety are delegated to junior managers who are not "controlling minds". For example, a prosecution of Great Western Trains following the Southall rail crash collapsed because no manager was also prosecuted. The number of convicions is very small (in single figures) and in each case the company was very small, with a single "controlling mind".

Following a report by the Law Commission, several consultation papers, and publication of a draft bill in early 2005, the Queen's Speech on 17 May 2005 included a reference to an Act of Parliament to be passed in 2005/6 to widen the scope for prosecutions for corporate manslaughter. A company would committ the new offence of corporate manslaughter if its activities were managed or organised by its senior managers so as to cause a person's death and amounted to a "gross breach" of the duty of care owed to the deceased. A company cannot be imprisoned, but the penalty would be an unlimited fine.

External link

• Draft bill and consultation paper (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs4/con_corp_mans.html) (published by the Home Office, 23 March 2005)