Cotswold Geotechnical (Holdings) Ltd (Cotswold) has been found guilty of corporate manslaughter. It is the first company to be charged with and convicted of that offence under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and it has been fined £385,000.
A jury at Winchester Crown Court has found Cotswold Geotechnical (Holdings) Ltd (Cotswold) guilty of corporate manslaughter. This criminal prosecution is the first time a company has been charged with or convicted of this offence under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which came into force on 6 April 2008.
The case against Cotswold followed the death of an employee in September 2008 while taking soil samples from the bottom of a 3.5 metre trial pit at a building site. The jury heard that the walls of the trial pit were not supported and soil collapsed into the trial pit, burying and asphyxiating the employee. The prosecution’s case was that Cotswold’s systems had failed to take all reasonably practicable steps to protect the employee from its unsafe system of work in digging trial pits that were unnecessarily dangerous. The company ignored well-recognised industry guidance that prohibited entry into excavations more than 1.2 metres deep and, at the time of the employee’s death, Cotswold had left him unsupervised on site. The firm was fined £385,000.
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