Lecture notes
Corporate Liability
- Module
- Law (NA)
- Institution
- University Of Leicester (LE)
Lecture notes of 21 pages for the course Law at LE
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lOMoARcPSD|805298Lecture notes, lecture final lectures - Corporate liability
Criminal Law (University of Leicester)
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SCHOOL OF LAW
CRIMINAL LAW
LW2220 & LW3340
LECTURE HAND-OUT
Corporate Liability
&
Revision
Sally Kyd
sally.kyd@le.ac.uk
2015/16
1
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Corporate Criminal Liability
When and in what circumstances will a company be guilty of committing a
crime?
o Company has legal personality
o Companies are capable of committing any criminal offence, except:
those which require human action such as sexual offences
and bigamy
offences carrying a mandatory term of imprisonment (murder)
Case for and against corporate liability
lots of fatalities that occur as a result of companies that don’t attract a lot of
media attention- 2014/15, according to the Health and Safety Exec, there
were 142 fatalities at work
Mechanisms for holding a company liable
is it the company we want to hold liable or the individuals that run the
company that should be criminalised? surely only people are capable of for
example being deterred and surely it’s the people who run the company that
deserve to be punished
company cannot be liable for murder cos that carries a mandatory life
sentence which is a prison sentence and you cant send a company to prison
so the main way of punishing a company is by a fine and is that really gonna
do the job we want it to do? is that gonna deter? argument is its not the
company who run it as a whole, it’s the employees to begin with cos they
may lose their jobs if the company goes bust, innocent shareholders who lose
money as a result of the fine. argument that company doesn’t have a soul to
be damned etc so its not the company that should be liable as a whole it
should be the individuals that run it. on the other hand it has been argued
that no companies do deserve to be blamed its not just the individuals that
run the company it’s the way the company acts as a legal personality that
makes it responsible.
Price makes the argument that it’s the corporate structure and the systemic
failures within a corporation that are responsible for the decisions made
1. Vicarious liability
With many offences of strict liability and negligence a company can be
vicariously liable for the acts of its employees in the course of their duties.
National Rivers Authority v Alfred McAlpine Homes [1994] Crim. LR 760
• Co allowed wet cement to enter controlled waters.
• court was looking at the purpose of the statute and what would need to be
done to make the statute effective and they said the statute intended to
protect the environment and prevent pollution arising from industrial,
commercial or agricultural circumstances. in all those cases such pollution
would be as a result of a person such as a workman, plant operative etc in a
fairly low position in the company
2
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