News

8 March 2010

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 - new sentencing guidelines published.

Following on from our article of April 2009 which raised the issue of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 official guidelines have recently been published that set out the sentence a business convicted of corporate manslaughter or a health and safety offence causing death should receive. Significant penalties can now be imposed on your business if it is convicted of either offence.

Financial Penalties

  • The court can impose an unlimited fine on your business if you are convicted of a corporate manslaughter or a health and safety offence.
  • According to the guidelines the appropriate fine for a conviction for corporate manslaughter “will seldom be less than £500,000 and may be measured in millions of pounds”. 
  •  Where a health and safety offence has caused a death, fines “will seldom be less than £100,000 and may be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds or more”.
  • Fines can be increased if there is evidence that your business could have foreseen the accident and where breaches of rules were widespread within your business.

Remedial orders

  • The court may impose a remedial order that requires your business to address specific failings    that were involved in the offence. Because the court will not usually take into account any remedial costs, when it assesses a fine, you may have to pay both a fine and the costs of improving your internal procedures to comply with a remedial order.

Reputational damage

  • The court can impose a publicity order which forces your business to advertise that it has been convicted of corporate manslaughter. The order may include details of the conviction, such as the amount of the fine and the terms of a remedial order.

Insurance

  • Insurance cover may not be available to your business if it has been convicted of a corporate manslaughter offence. However, if you mount a successful defence, cover may be available for any legal costs that your business has incurred. Make sure you check your position with your insurers.

If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised here please contact Graham Neyt on 07831 266923.

 

 

The contents of this article are for the purposes of general awareness only. They do not purport to constitute legal or professional advice. The law may have changed since this article was published. Readers should not act on the basis of the information included and should take appropriate professional advice upon their own particular circumstances.

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