Corporate Manslaughter

A criminal offense holding a company or other organization, rather than only an individual employee or director, liable for a death caused by a gross failure in how the organization managed or organized its activities, most closely associated with the United Kingdom's Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which created the offense after earlier attempts to convict a company of manslaughter under ordinary common law principles repeatedly failed because prosecutors could not identify a single senior individual whose personal guilt could be attributed to the whole organization. A successful prosecution requires proving that the way the organization's activities were managed by its senior management was a substantial element in the gross breach that caused the death, and conviction carries an unlimited fine along with the possibility of a court ordered publicity order, though the Act notably does not permit a prison sentence since a corporation itself cannot be imprisoned. Several other countries, including Australia and Canada, have enacted comparable organizational liability offenses for a workplace or public death caused by corporate negligence.