... accidents at work and 384 members of the public were killed because of accidents, 72% of which were due to acts of trespass or suicide. A spokesperson said the Health and Safety Commission "strongly supports" the new proposals by the home secretary. Over the last 40 years 22,000 people have been killed at work or business related disasters but they have only been three successful prosecutions for corporate manslaughter. In Kite v OLL Ltd the criminal case against the company collapsed because the prosecution had been unable to satisfy the doctrine of identification. The identification doctrine prevents large corporations from being held responsible for manslaughter. Number of interesting issues arises from this. First, what is doctrine of identification? Second, why should this doctrine act as a barrier to conviction and thirdly is an issue relation to causation - was conduct of corporation a cause of death. The identification doctrine originated from the civil ...

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