... necessarily serious injury, or, 2) an intention to do an act, or omit to act where there is a duty to do so, being reckless whether death or personal injury be caused4 Indeed although the sort of mental state the defendant must have it still remains to be seen how a company, as an inanimate legal abstraction, can have mens rea when it is incapable of thought. The answer to this can be sought within the principle of identification. This principle was first established in the case of R v Coroner for East Kent5. It stated that courts were prepared to accept that a corporate body could be guilty of manslaughter when both mens rea and actus reus could be established against those who were the "embodiment of the corporate body itself". This meant that a company is and can only be guilty of manslaughter if a person has enough control ...

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