Fines Appropriate to Breaches of Safety at Work
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201839906300519 |
| Published date | 01 October 1999 |
| Date | 01 October 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Fines
Appropriate
to
Breaches
of
Safety
at
Work
plaintiff
had
been aware of his detention, even though he may have
been asleep during
the
vital period, so
that
no argument could be
mounted on a claim that the damages were awarded without his being
aware of
the
infringement of his liberty. Although Clarke U stated that
he would
not
himself have awarded the sum of£500 to a person for false
imprisonment while he was asleep for two and a half hours, in circum-
stances in which his detention would have been lawful,
had
it been
reviewed in time,
the
court did
not
interfere with the damages, which
did
not
purport to be (and were not) either aggravated or exemplary
damages.
Fines Appropriate to Breaches of Safety at Work
RvHowe and
Son
[1999] 2 All ER 249
The importance of this case for the future lies perhaps
not
so
much
in the
details of
the
defendant's failure to ensure
the
safety at work of its
workforce or in the fine imposed after its plea of guilty to
an
offence
contrary to the Health andSafety at Work etc. Act 1974 as in
the
general
pronouncements of the Court of Appeal upon the principles which
apply to such offences
and
the facts which may aggravate, or the facts
which may mitigate, the penalties which are to be imposed.
The appellant company was a small precision engineering company
set up by a father
and
son
and
having a dozen employees.
It
used a
number
of electrical machines and, on the occasion of a routine cleaning
of
the
plant,
an
employee engaged on this task was given a machine
which proved to be lethal, because of electric faults arising largely from
the fact
that
the company had no system at all for checking its electrical
equipment. The company pleaded guilty to four charges, conceding that
it had so acted, or failed to act, and that it could be said that it had failed
to ensure
the
safety at work of the employees, so far as was reasonably
practicable. The company was fined £48,000 and ordered to pay £7,500
costs, for its breaches of s 2 (1) of the 1974 Act
and
for particular breaches
of the regulations made
under
the Act.
On appeal, the appellant challenged the level of the fine, in view of
the modest size of the company and of the scale of its activities and
profits. It was shown that it had paid no dividends, but had ploughed
any excess back into the maintenance of the plant
and
had never paid
either of its two directors more
than
£20,000 in any year.
HELD,
ALLOWING
THE
APPEAL
IN
PART,
the fine be reduced to £15,000.
The ground for that. reduction was that the appellant was a small
company with limited resources and that the Crown Court judge
had
not given adequate weight to the financial position of
the
appellant. The
fine and costs
meant
that, as they were
not
deductible to tax,
the
whole
loss would fall on the two directors and the shareholders.
427
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