23 April 2009
Louis Wustemann

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has authorised the first ever charge under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.

On 23 April, the CPS authorised a charge of corporate manslaughter against Gloucestershire-based Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings over the death of 27-year-old employee Alexander Wright.

Wright, a junior geologist, was killed in September 2008 when the sides of the pit in which he'd been collecting soil samples collapsed and crushed him under several tonnes of mud. The pit had been excavated as part of a survey at a site in Stroud. Wright was declared dead at the scene but emergency services were unable to recover his body for two days.

As well as corporate manslaughter, Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings has been charged with breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) for failing to protect Wright.

Company director Peter Eaton has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter and with breaching Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act, which says that where a company's offence is committed with the consent, or due to the connivance or neglect, of a director, the director will also be guilty of that offence.

Kate Leonard, reviewing lawyer at the CPS Special Crime Division, said: "Under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 an organisation is guilty of corporate manslaughter if the way in which its activities are managed or organised causes a death and amounts to a gross breach of a duty of care to the person who died.

"A substantial part of the breach must have been in the way activities were organised by senior management.

"I have concluded that there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction for this offence."

Though this is the first charge brought under the new law, experts suggest it may not be the best test of how it will work in practice.

"The purpose of the new offence was to try and gain traction on large and medium sized companies," David Bergman director of the Centre for Corporate Accountability which campaigned for the new Act, pointed out to the Financial Times. Cotswold Geotechnical only recorded turnover of £330,000 in 2008.

The charges against Peter Eaton make it possible he might have been identified as the "controlling mind" who actions or failures led to the accident, which would have made a prosecution possible without the new Act.

"The director has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter which indicates to me that it is likely that the company would have been prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter under the old law in any event," said Jon Cooper of lawyers Bond Pearce.

"The company is very small with a turnover of only £330k. I think it's unlikely that this case will give any guidance on new elements of the Act such as senior management and management failure."

One aspect of the case that will excite interest, if the corporate killing charge succeeds will be how the judge sets the penalty. The offence carries the potential for an unlimited fine, but the Sentencing Guidelines Council is not expected to produce guidance for judges before the end of the year. Draft guidance published in 2007, and now being revised, suggested fines of between 55 and 10% of a convicted company's turnover.

Eaton will appear before Stroud magistrates on 17 June to face charges as an individual and on the company's behalf. The gross negligence manslaughter charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

 

Categories:
Corporate manslaughter, News



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