Corporate Manslaughter Bill

Corporate Responsibility | Duty of Care | Corporate Manslaughter | Health & Safety

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What is the Corporate Manslaughter Bill?

The Bill came onto the statute book in July 2007 as the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill and became effective on 6th April 2008.

Why has it come about?

Corporate Manslaughter is a crime that is committed by a company or organisation in relation to a work-related death. The Act will affect all companies and organisations regardless of size and prosecution can follow where a safety failure is the cause of work-related deaths.

How it will affect you?

In practical terms, the essence of the bill is that a company or organisation becomes vulnerable to litigation, when it is aware of a risk and appropriate measures, but knowingly puts in place a system that is inadequate.

Background

Currently prosecutions of companies for corporate manslaughter rely on the successful identification of individual managers or directors as the 'controlling mind' of the organisation. However, under the new offence of corporate manslaughter it is the company or organisation that will be criminally liable for the most serious incidences of management failure that result in death.

An organisation will be guilty of the new offence of corporate manslaughter if the way in which any of its activities are managed or organised by its senior managers causes a person's death or amounts to a gross breach of the Duty of Care it owed to the deceased.