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Wells, Celia --- "Corporate Criminal Responsibility" [2005] ELECD 202; in Tully, Stephen (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility

Editor(s): Tully, Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843768203

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Corporate Criminal Responsibility

Author(s): Wells, Celia

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

8 Corporate criminal responsibility
Celia Wells



Introduction
The recent emergence of corporate responsibility as a topic of debate reflects
concerns about the safety of workers and of members of the public. Disasters
such as rail crashes, ferry capsizes and chemical plant explosions have led to
calls for those enterprises to be prosecuted for manslaughter. Cultural changes
in risk perception have played an important role in prompting the evolution of
legal principles of attribution. Doubts about the appropriateness of the two
theories of corporate responsibility hitherto recognised by legal systems have
set in. One of the more egregious examples of poor safety attitudes was seen
when in 1987 a car ferry left the Belgian port of Zeebrugge with its doors open
and capsized with the loss of nearly 200 lives. The subsequent inquiry in
England, where P&O Ferries was based, found a history of open-door sailings,
and management disregard of obvious safety measures such as a system of
indicator lights informing the bridge whether the doors were closed. Although
P&O were prosecuted for manslaughter, itself a historic event, it proved
impossible to convict the company because of the restrictive identification
theory. The very fact that safety was not taken seriously within the company,
that no director had responsibility for safety, made the identification theory a
clumsy tool of attribution.

Corporations and criminal law
Corporations are legally deemed to be single entities, distinct and separate
from all the individuals who comprise them. Legal personality means that
corporations can sue ...