I spotted this (I’ve removed names as they are unimportant): Company director, XX, has been sentenced to a 20-month jail sentence, after creating and selling over £380,000 worth of counterfeit clothing. XXl manufactured fake garments from brands such as Nike, Adidas, Bench, Diesel, and Lacoste, at his factory, YYY Ltd. XX pleaded guilty to 40 counts of applying false trademarks to items of clothing. On top of the jail sentence, he has been disqualified from acting as a company director for 8 years, and must either pay a fine of over £19,000, or risk an extended time in jail. Has there ever been an instance where the courts have thrown the book this hard at someone being responsible for the death of an employee?

For information about sentencing in H&S cases were death results see http://sentencingcouncil...slaughter_accessible.pdf Especially Part D- Level of fines. There, they recommend that the basic starting point for fines under the Corporate Manslaughter Act be £500 000 while in cases where death results from a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, without Corporate Manslaughter the starting point should be a £100 000. These are starting points for the fines, with mitigation and aggravation being taken into account. The guidance also states that in serious cases there is nothing wrong with imposing fines in the “millions of pounds.”

I think Walker that the case you quote was fairly easy to prove in a court of law, very black & white I should imagine - unfortunately it appears that it is much harder to prove any individual was responsible for the death of a worker….too many grey areas for solicitors to exploit

Victor, perhaps you did not read my post...the gross negligent manslaughter (Tebay) case was a health and safety failure for the death of four workers and I believe this is the longest sentence of 9 years, but reduced on appeal.

Thanks Ray, no I didn't read it - long way to go it would appear.