Health and Safety and Corporate Manslaughter

There have been a couple of cases, one that we highlighted recently that brings to the fore the issue of Corporate Manslaughter in the case of Health and Safety offences. Doing the job right tells the story of a building company and freelance Health and Safety Advisor who were both found guilty of Manslaughter and have recently been sent to jail for the offences.

On the 3rd February, 2015 a building and joinery firm was sentenced after pleading guilty in December to ‘corporate manslaughter’ and a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act by failing to ensure the safety of employees. The company was fined £200,000 for the corporate manslaughter offence, and £20,000 for the Health and Safety breach.

The owner of the company, also pleaded guilty to a breach of the same act and was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, 200 hours unpaid work, a publicity order to advertise what happened on the company website for a set period of time, and to take out a half page spread in the local newspaper and pay costs of £31,504.77.

Clearly the courts are taking these matters very seriously indeed. However, there are other moves in the pipeline which may have even greater consequences. The Sentencing Council has released draft guidelines for the judiciary to place greater emphasis on realistic fines for both Corporate Manslaughter and Health and Safety offences. This could result in the maximum fines for the most serious offences been set at £20 million for Corporate Manslaughter and £10 million for Health and Safety.

Billionaire gets 16 years in prison for asbestos-related deaths

A billionaire is on his way to prison due to his company's mishandling of asbestos over two decades ago.

Stephan Schmidheiny is the man facing 16 years in prison after being convicted of negligence in a civil action lawsuit that has been ongoing since 2009. His company, Eternit fiber, went bankrupt in 1986. But before that it dealt heavily in asbestos and allowed asbestos particles to spread across northern Italy due by not following safety precautions. In total, some 2,000 deaths have been caused so far by the actions of Eternit, split between workers at Eternit plants and the general public.

The asbestos particles were leftovers from roof coverings and pipe production. Rather than being contained, it was left to be carried away by the wind and to surrounding populated areas.

As well as the prison term, Schmidheiny is going to have to pay each civil party 30,000 euros, which could amount to millions in total due to the 6,000 people involved in the court case.

Schmidheiny isn't the only man facing a long prison term. Major shareholder Baron Jean-Louis Marie Ghislain de Cartier de Marchienne is facing the same 16 year term. Their crime's maximum punishment was actually 12 years, but the prosecution asked for 20 due to the fact asbestos related diseases can present a couple of decades after exposure occurs. In the end, 16 years is what each man will face, and they could both end their days in prison. Schmidheiny is 64, and Marchienne is 90 years old.

Source: Medical Daily and BBC News

Rio's oldest prison implosion

Usually, when you see a building implosion video it contains just one building going up in smoke. But the video you see above has 8 of them all going down.

The site is in Rio and was the oldest prison in the region called Presidio Frei Caneca. It took a lot of planning, with computer simulations being carried out before the actual implosion.

Here's some more raw footage of the blast:



Source: Demolition News