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N ovember 1 1996 will be remembered by operators for the
Page 152
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12-month jail sentence handed out to Alan Jackson, convicted on charges relating to what is thought to be the first corporate manslaughter case brought against a road haulier in the UK.
Jackson's company, Jackson Transport (Osset), was also fined 115,000 for manslaughter, plus a further £7000 for failing to ensure the safety of its employees.
The case arose following an accident in the operator's yard in May 1994. A 21-year-old employee, Paul Hodgson, came into contact with a toxic chemical while he was cleaning the inside of a chemical tanker.
More manslaughter prosecutions involving companies are expected in the future and there are good reasons why more haulage operators are likely to be among them—and not because of any precedents set here. One aspect is changes in the views of the judges, who are in turn responding to changes in public morality.
Since April 1992, the Health & Safety Executive has referred a total of 40 fatal accidents in the workplace to the Crown Prosecution Service. Nine led to prosecutions for manslaughter— unlawful killing where there is no intention to kill. Three cases have ended with guilty verdicts for the company concerned as well as for the individual.
About two years ago, new criteria for determining the offence, defined by the Lord Chief Justice Taylor, should have made businesses such as road haulage operations take more notice. Stephen Kirkbright, one of the UK's leading transport law representatives, says: "Lord Justice Taylor said the old view that one had to prove recklessness was incorrect, What had to be proven was that the defendant had been guilty of gross negligence and that there was a chain of causation linking it to the death."
He is a partner at Leeds-based solicitors Ford and Warren, the