... convict in several major disasters in recent years, has shown the current law to be inadequate. In the last decade, despite over 3,000 workplace deaths, there have been only 2 companies successfully convicted of manslaughter (Tolson Messenger, 2003) The larger the company, the more likelihood of escaping accountability, as the structure of the such organizations involve many tiers of management with degrees of autonomy for deciding local practices. Even though death may have resulted from serious management failures, the legal or evidential standard to convict a director cannot be met. The Sheen Report (Department of Transport, 1987) into the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster highlighted P&O's lack of safety policies, and that the 'disease of sloppiness' infected the whole workforce. The notion that a number of innocent acts, if aggregated, could be construed as an illegal one, proving corporate culpability was rejected by the courts in R v HM Coroner ...

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