A company has become the first in the UK to be charged under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
The Crown Prosecution Service have authorised a charge of corporate manslaughter against Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings in relation to the death of a 27-year-old employee. The employee who worked as a junior geologist, was taking soil samples from inside an excavated pit, when the sides collapsed crushing him under several tonnes of mud. As well as corporate manslaughter, the company has been charged with breaching section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, for failing to protect an employee.
Company director, Peter Eaton, has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter and with an offence contrary to section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, 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.
CPS lawyer, Kate Leonard 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."
The prosecution is likely to be one many under the new legislation and legal analysts will be interested to follow how the legislation is interpreted. One aspect of interest in this particular case, if the corporate killing charge succeeds will be how the judge sets the penalty. The offence carries the potential for an unlimited fine and draft guidance published in 2007, and now being revised, suggested fines of between 55% and 10% of a convicted company's turnover.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 2009 to face charges as an individual and on the company's behalf. The gross negligence manslaughter charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
