Corporate manslaughter (England and Wales)

Corporate manslaughter is a criminal offence in English law, being an act of homicide committed by a company or organisation. In general, in English criminal law, a juristic person is in the same position as a natural person, and may be convicted for committing many offences. 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, although all defendants in that case were acquitted.

The common law test to impose criminal responsibility on a company only arises where a person's gross negligence has led to another person's death and (under the "identification doctrine") that person 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 fairly be said to think and act through him). This is tested by reference to the detailed work patterns of the manager, and the job title or description given to that person is irrelevant, but there is often no single person who acts as a "controlling mind", particularly in large companies, and many issues of health and safety are delegated to junior managers who are not "controlling minds".

On 6 March 1987, 193 people died when the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized. Although individual employees failed in their duties, the Sheen Report severely criticised the attitude to safety prevalent in P&O, stating:

...
Wikipedia