The Hatfield disaster, and the four lives lost there, is but one in a line of recent disasters involving loss of life at the hands of, many would say, big businesses: the Herald of Free Enterprise (1987 – 190 lives lost); the King’s Cross fire (1987 – 31); Piper Alpha (1988 – 167); the Clapham disaster (1988 – 35); Southall (1997 – 7); and Paddington (1999 – 31).
The present law
It has been practically impossible to convict companies for corporate manslaughter. It is difficult to establish who personifies the ‘company’ (the directing mind and will criterion) in order to prove that it has a culpable mind for the purposes of an offence. This has been done successfully in a couple of cases, where the companies in question are small (such as the Lyme Bay canoeing tragedy (R v Kite and OLL Ltd Winchester Crown Court, 8 December, 1994, unreported).
The Southall crash is a prime example of the difficulties presented by the current law.
In December 1998, corporate manslaughter charges were brought against GWT, although no named individual was alleged to bear responsibility for its acts. These were soon dropped for two main reasons.
First, the GWT indictment did not name an individual or individuals to prima facie go against.
Second, it was unclear whether corporate manslaughter was to be established on the basis that a senior GWT individual, who was considered to be its directing mind and will, had been negligent; or whether there was a body that collectively formed the directing mind and will and which had been negligent. In the Attorney-General’s Reference (No 2 of 1999) [2000] 3 WLR 195, the Court of Appeal decided that a defendant could be convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence even in the absence of evidence as to their state of mind. However, a non-human defendant could not be convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in the absence of evidence establishing the guilt of an identified individual for the same crime.
The Southall criminal proceedings are arguably the high watermark for what some consider to be, the ineffectiveness of the current law on corporate manslaughter.
