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An employment tribunal had been entitled to refuse an application to stay appeals brought against two prohibition notices issued under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.22 on the basis that criminal proceedings were pending. The applicant had not shown that there would be a real risk of substantial prejudice which might lead to injustice if the stay was refused.

A hotel was liable under the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 s.2 for the death of a guest who had fallen from an upstairs window after sitting on the windowsill. The deceased's decision to run an obvious risk did not outweigh factors which pointed to liability on the part of the hotel.

Fresh evidence did not undermine the safety of an offender's conviction for one offence of failing to comply with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 Pt 4 reg.19(1) and two offences contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 following an incident where the roof of a building had collapsed during a construction project. There was a wealth of evidence that the offender was the person in control of the work for the purposes of reg.16, and that he was the "employer" for the purposes of the Act.

A fine imposed on a subsidiary company for an offence under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3(1) was reduced where the sentencing judge had improperly taken into account the parent company's turnover and resources when applying an uplift to the starting point reached under the Sentencing Guideline for Health and Safety Offences, Corporate Manslaughter and Food Safety and Hygiene Offences. The court considered the proper application of the Guideline.

A fine of £700,000 imposed against a company for offences of failing to ensure the safety of its employees contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1), was well within the range provided in the relevant sentencing guideline; the fine was imposed for the first offence, with no separate penalty imposed for the second, and the judge treated the circumstances of the second offence as an aggravating factor of the first. The nature of the offending, both the original offence giving rise to a wholly avoidable and tragic death and the subsequent failure to put the machine concerned into a safe condition, demanded a fine of the size imposed.

The court examined the level of fines imposed on a car parts manufacturing company following an outbreak of Legionnaire's Disease and an explosion on its premises.

A company's conviction under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1) for breach of its duty towards its employees by failing to do all that was reasonably practicable to protect them from exposure to asbestos was well-founded and was not unsafe. However, the fine of £400,000 imposed was manifestly excessive and the appropriate sentence was a fine of £190,000.

A gas engineer was entitled to damages from his employer for an ankle injury sustained after falling into a hole at work. Although there had been a degree of overstatement of his pain and its effect on him, the claimant had not been fundamentally dishonest. He had merely engaged in such conduct in order to convince, rather than deceive, medical experts as to his injury following the employer's vigorous attempts to avoid fully compensating him.

There had been no inconsistency in convicting a company of failing to ensure that work at height was properly planned contrary to the Work at Height Regulations 2005 reg.4(1) and acquitting it of failing to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and failing to ensure, as far as reasonably practical, the health and safety of its employees. The judge had been wrong to assess culpability as being high; the fine imposed was reduced from £900,000 to £135,000.

The court emphasised that while a basis of plea and sensible agreement between parties was encouraged and expected to be weighed carefully by the court before departing from it, such agreement was not binding on the court as a matter of constitutional principle. However, in the instant case, the sentencing judge had had no sufficient justification for departing from the parties' agreement, and a fine of £475,000 following a company's guilty plea to an offence under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 reg.3(1)(a) was reduced to £200,000.

On an appeal under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.24 against a prohibition notice, the employment tribunal was entitled to take into account all the available evidence relevant to the state of affairs at the time the notice was served, including information coming to light afterwards.

The court refused permission to appeal against a ruling, at a preparatory hearing, that two individual partners in a hotel business had a case to answer for strict liability offences under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3 following the death of a guest who had accidentally fallen out of a window. It also concluded that the issue of whether the individual partners were employers for the purposes of s.3 should be left to the jury to decide.

The court considered the definitive sentencing guideline on corporate manslaughter, health and safety and food and safety hygiene offences when significantly reducing the fine imposed on a company following the death of a contractor on its premises. The company, a "very large organisation" for the purposes of the guideline, had pleaded guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3(1) which occurred in unusual circumstances and involved low culpability and a low likelihood of harm.

A sentence of eight months' imprisonment was not manifestly excessive where the owner of a hotel had pleaded guilty to five breaches of fire safety laws that had taken place over a long period of time. It was not appropriate to use newspaper reports in court as evidence of sentences for similar breaches as they were not full or authorised reports of the cases.

A suspended sentence of 15 months' imprisonment imposed on a building contractor for gross negligence manslaughter was unduly lenient. Cases where employees were required to work from dangerous heights with an obvious potential for serious or fatal consequences if they were not protected required deterrent sentences. Furthermore, there had been no basis for suspending the sentence in the instant case.

A judge had erred in adopting too high a starting point and in failing to apply any reduction for mitigating factors when imposing a fine on a company following its guilty plea to failing to take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent any person falling a distance liable to cause personal injury, contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.33(1)(c).

A fire authority's decision to retain the conduct of an investigation following a serious fire in a social housing tower block did not give rise to a perception of bias, notwithstanding that the fire authority was responsible for the operation and organisation of the brigade which had been subject to criticism for its actions. In particular, a decision whether to prosecute the local authority for potential breaches of the Regulation Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 would be taken by a solicitor from a different part of the fire authority's structure, with no direct link to the fire and rescue role of the fire authority.

A fine of £600,000 imposed on a company following the death of a lorry driver visiting one of its sites was upheld. The breach of duty was serious and the company had the financial resources to pay the fine.

A judge had not erred in refusing a submission of no case to answer in respect of health and safety offences committed by a company specialising in traffic management designs for UK airports. Following the death of a pedestrian hit by a lorry while crossing an airport access road, it was for the jury to consider the company's argument that there was insufficient evidence of material risk.

In a case in which a road managing agent and its subcontractor had been convicted of health and safety at work offences centring on their failure to undertake a sufficient risk assessment before designing a traffic management system, the judge had been entitled to direct the jury that it had to find that the system posed a "material" risk to road users. He did not have to further define the concept of material risk, and he did not have to contrast real and fanciful risks.

The creation of a material risk by the carelessness of an employee remained a material risk for the purpose of the offence of failing so far as reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of employees contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.33(1)(a).

An employment tribunal had been wrong to uphold the issue of a prohibition notice served on the appellant company under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.22 in relation to exposed conductors found at a construction site. The inspectors who had issued the notice should have allowed the company the opportunity to show that the conductors were not live; safety in the meantime could have been ensured by a direction under s.20(2)(e) that the relevant room and its contents should be left undisturbed.

A sentence of 16 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, was not manifestly excessive where a landlord had pleaded guilty to failing to maintain gas appliances which had caused a tenant's death from carbon monoxide poisoning, and had injured a second tenant and a neighbour.

The test for "impropriety", justifying the making of a wasted costs order, was the rigorous test set out in Ridehalgh v Horsefield [1994] Ch. 205; it required "conduct which would be regarded as improper according to the consensus of professional (including judicial) opinion". In the instant case, the discontinuance of manslaughter charges by the Crown Prosecution Service and the fact that the court found that there was no case to answer in relation to a subsequent health-and-safety charge did not justify the making of a wasted costs order against the CPS.

A fine of £50,000 imposed on a company following its plea of guilty to failing to discharge the duty imposed by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1) was justified. Although there was no evidence of the company putting profit before safety or any wilful disregard of safety procedures or warnings, a significant fine was called for because there was a total absence of any consideration of safety procedures, risk assessments, training or supervision.

When dismissing appeals by two companies regarding the level of fines imposed for environmental protection and safety offences, the court considered the appropriate approach to the fixing of fines and the level of fine to be imposed.

A fine of £350, 015 was appropriate in the case of a company which operated a historic building as a tourist attraction and had been convicted of health and safety failures resulting in the death of a visitor who had fallen from a bridge. Although the company had generally good heath and safety systems, its failures in relation to the bridge had been such as to create a foreseeable risk of serious injury.

Although a suspended custodial sentence imposed in respect of multiple breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 was not wrong in principle given the offender's history of failure to comply with previous assessments and enforcement notices, the unpaid work requirement of 200 hours was manifestly excessive given the offender's circumstances and was reduced to 100 hours.

A judge had been correct in concluding that it was for the jury to consider whether the requisite material risk of danger had been established in the trial of a building contractor for offences under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1) and s.3(1) relating to the removal of asbestos from a department store.

The Court of Appeal gave guidance on the effects of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2 and s.3.

An employment judge had erred in concluding that it was not reasonably practicable for a statutory authority to serve notices of appeal against 10 improvement notices within time. The authority had had expert legal advice, knew of the relevant time limits and would not have been prejudiced in respect of an impending criminal investigation into incidents arising out of the same subject-matter by issuing its appeal notices.

A fine which had the effect of putting a company out of business might be an acceptable consequence of a conviction for corporate manslaughter.

A judge had not erred in imposing a fine of £666,667 on a rail network infrastructure controller following its plea of guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3 following an accident in which two rail workers died.

The duty of a parent to supervise his child was concurrent with the duty of an employer to conduct its undertaking so as to ensure that persons not in its employment were not exposed to health or safety risks. Where a parent had breached his duty to supervise his child at a swimming pool, that did not absolve the swimming pool operator from responsibility when the child suffered severe brain damage after almost drowning.

A fine of £100,000 imposed on the senior partner of a small family vehicle recovery business, following his guilty plea to a breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1) that had resulted in an employee's death was reduced to £60,000 because insufficient account had been taken of the offender's means to pay.

It might be appropriate, in health and safety prosecutions in the Crown Court, at all events when the matter was not the subject of an early plea, for a judge to be nominated at an early stage to manage the case to trial. That should be done in all cases involving death or very serious injury and in any other cases where there was potential complexity.

A casual worker who had been working on the building of a house extension was sufficiently controlled by his employer to qualify as an employee under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.53. Accordingly, the employer was liable for offences under s.33(1)(a) and s.33(1)(c) when the worker suffered severe brain injuries when he fell from a raised platform at the site.

In proceedings brought under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1) and s.3(1), the prosecution only had to prove that the result described in those sections had not been achieved or prevented. A prima facie case of breach had then been established, unless the defendant could make good the reasonable practicability defence. Prosecutors had to do more than simply assert that a state of affairs existed, but they did not have to identify and prove specific breaches of duty; the overriding test was whether or not defendants had been given fair notice of the claim against them.

Respective fines of £250,000 and £75,000 imposed on a large warehousing and distribution company for its breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 reg.3(1), which had resulted in an employee's death, were manifestly excessive and were substituted with fines of £225,000 and £50,000 respectively, as too little responsibility had been placed on the co-defendant who had been the immediate cause of the death.

A judge did not have the jurisdiction to rule that there was no case to answer before any of the Crown evidence had been heard even though the form of the evidence was clear.

Where a worker had been killed when the dumper truck he was driving overturned the prosecution had established that there was a risk to the health and safety of employees and therefore the onus, under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.40, was on the worker's employer and the undertaker of the project to prove they had done all that was reasonably practicable to avoid that risk.

A judge had placed too much emphasis on apportionment of liability and had failed to take sufficient account of culpability and financial means when imposing a fine and costs on a company that had breached the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.2(1).

A fine of £150,000 imposed on the defendant company, following its guilty pleas to breaches of health and safety law, was manifestly excessive since it had co-operated fully with the Health and Safety Executive, had entered guilty pleas at the earliest opportunity, had taken steps to improve health and safety procedures and was genuinely remorseful.

Where an offence had various ingredients and it was sufficient that only one of those ingredients be satisfied, the judge had failed to explicitly direct that the jury needed to achieve unanimity by the same route. However, his direction was only marginally deficient and convictions for manslaughter by gross negligence were safe.

It was appropriate for the Crown Prosecution Service to reconsider its decision not to prosecute individuals for gross negligence manslaughter after an employee had fallen through a roof light to his death; it was seriously arguable that a different decision might be reached if account were to be taken of the seriousness of an employer's failure to give proper instruction to an employee as to the dangers of working at heights or on roofs.

The decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether or not to prosecute would be lawful if it was taken in accordance with the DPP's code, which included both evidential and public interest considerations, and it was a decision reasonably open to the decision-maker on the material before him. Where the decision was lawfully made, it would not violate the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 Art.2 .

A fine of £100,000 for a hospital trust's failure to discharge its duty to persons not in its employment under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3(1) was reduced to £40,000 as the judge had failed to take sufficient account of the mitigating features and the fact that the trust was a public body.

A suspended sentence was unduly lenient where a defendant had committed acts of gross negligence in failing to protect the health and safety of his employees.

It was appropriate in the interest of proportionality to reduce the fine imposed on a rail track maintenance contractor for its failure to discharge its duty as an employer under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3, which had been a cause of the Hatfield rail disaster, where there was a huge disparity between the fine imposed on the contractor and the fine imposed on the codefendant rail network owner.

Where a defendant company had pleaded guilty to failing to discharge a duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.3 , contrary to s.33(1)(a) of that Act, the sentence of a large fine was excessive, having regard to the facts of the case, and in the light of the judge's indication that a fine following a guilty plea would be less than that sum.

The judge had been plainly right to find that a former secretary's upper limb disorder was a work-related injury, that her employer had been in breach of statutory duty under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 , and that the injury had been caused by those breaches of statutory duty.

Where a four year old boy had died as a result of falling into a septic tank, the resulting convictions of manslaughter by gross negligence and failure to discharge a duty contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 s.33 (1)(a) and s.37 (1) were not safe where there was a paucity of evidence relating to the condition of the manhole cover immediately before the accident.

The Health and Safety Executive had been correct in deciding not to prosecute under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. On the facts there was no reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution against the proposed defendants for the death of a child caused by a vandalised door falling on him on a housing estate.

In the absence of any express indications, the transfer of liabilities between an old and a new NHS Trust did not include the transfer of criminal liability.

A fine totalling £100,000 for health and safety at work-related offences was reduced to a total of £55,000 on appeal after taking into account: (i) the offending company's culpability; (ii) the extent of any criminal default; and (iii) by reference to the mitigating and offending factors contained in F Howe & Son (Engineers Limited (1999) 2 All ER 249.

In the absence of any other evidence, the court could infer that the only possible cause of an injury to the claimant's finger was a faulty magnetic catch and a protruding screw.

The trial judge had erred in admitting documentary evidence in the form of questionnaires under s.24 Criminal Justice Act 1988 and as a result convictions under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 were unsafe.

It was inappropriate and wrong for the Health and Safety Executive to prosecute under s.6 Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 when there was an offence under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 1992 SI 1992/3037 covering exactly the same ground in different language and imposing a different penalty. * Leave to appeal to the House of Lords granted.

A local authority was entitled to issue summonses under the Food Safety Act 1990 in its own name rather than in the name of an individual.

The impartiality of a jury was to be presumed until there was proof to the contrary.

The mens rea for the offence of permitting employee bus drivers to exceed the maximum driving period without a break required more than mere negligence, as a subjective element in the mind of the person alleged to have permitted the offence was required.

The Deputy Chief Inspector of the Railways had the power, under s.22 Health and Safety and Work Act 1974, to serve a notice which prohibited activities even though they had ceased following a serious rail accident.

The layout of a house could not, without more, fall within the statutory words "state of the premises" in s.79(1)(a) Environmental Protection Act 1990.

The applicant had failed to demonstrate that it was appropriate for the court to interfere with the decision of the respondent's professional conduct committee refusing to restore the applicant to the register of nurses.

Appeal against a fine of #75,000 for an offence of failure to ensure the safety of an employee at work contrary to s.2 Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.The Court of Appeal held that since the accident had occurred as a result of the appellant's oversight and was not a deliberate failure to ensure adequate safety precautions, the sentence would be quashed and substituted with a more appropriate fine of #40,000.

Where a prosecuting authority had been misled as to the identity of the proper defendant, delay in the laying of informations and/or the service of a summons did not constitute an abuse of process.

The system of using limited clearance single-post telephones in between railway tracks created an obvious danger. The defendant had knowledge of the creation of an unacceptable risk to the health and safety of those using the tracks and failed to act promptly or adequately to reduce or eliminate that risk.

The Director of Public Prosecutions' decision not to prosecute a company and its managing director for gross negligence manslaughter was quashed on judicial review. The Director of Public Prosecutions was ordered to reconsider his decision because he had ignored relevant considerations and had wrongly applied a subjective test when considering whether a conviction was possible.

A company charged with the contamination of a public water supply would not be denied a fair trial when the jurors were drawn from the area affected by the contamination because the water supply was only interrupted for a short period and the usual practical steps to ensure the jury's impartiality could be taken.

Appellant company lost appeal by way of case stated against level of fine imposed by magistrates for breaches of s.2 and s.3 Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The appeal should have gone to the Crown Court because there the appellant did not have to discharge the heavy burden that the magistrates had acted outwith their jurisdiction.

A pet food company successfully appealed against a #600,000 fine for a Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 offence where the judge had wrongly sentenced on the basis that the company had put profit before safety.

Successful appeal against conviction upon a guilty plea at Swansea Crown Court in March 1999, to an offence contravening reg.13(2)(a) Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994. That regulation covered only the actual preparation of designs, not arranging other companies to prepare designs.

The court considered the meaning of the Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013 r.18 and reinstated a coroner's ruling that, at the inquest of a 43-year-old black man who had died shortly after being in police custody, the police officers could give their evidence from behind screens. The coroner had not failed to appreciate the importance of the open justice principle in making the decision.

A fresh inquest was ordered under the Coroners Act 1988 s.13(1)(b) into the death of a 14-year-old child in 1966, as new evidence was available which rendered a further inquest necessary and desirable in the interests of justice.

The Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 s.35(3) only placed a requirement on a coroner to make a report to the Director of Public Prosecutions where "the circumstances of the death being investigated" disclosed that an offence might have been committed. There was no requirement to report wrongdoing unrelated to the circumstances of death.

The court expressed concerns about the professional response to the death of a 13-month-old child who had died suddenly and in unexplained circumstances whilst in her parents' care. In particular, it criticised the police failure to undertake any real investigation until nine months after the child's death and the local authority's failure to take legal advice and start proceedings for a similar period. Those failures affected the court's ability to make findings of fact about the cause of the death during care proceedings.

Guidance was given on the factors to be taken into account by a court when considering whether an applicant seeking to quash a coroner's procedural ruling had established that the ruling would result in the inquest being one which was not compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 art.2.

The verdict of unlawful killing at an inquest could be returned only where death had resulted from murder, manslaughter (including corporate manslaughter) and infanticide. Driving offences causing death could not justify such a verdict.

It was not necessary for judges passing sentence for diminished responsibility manslaughter to set out an exact arithmetical computation of the sentence which would have been passed for a murder conviction. Whether or not the computation was set out, it provided a helpful method of approach, identifying the aggravating and mitigating features, and then applying an appropriate discount for the defendant's reduced level of culpability. That was a fact-specific decision, to be made by the judge, consistently with the medical evidence and the jury verdict, and then publicly explained.

There was no real and immediate risk to the life of a vulnerable adult, within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 art.2, which either a local authority or a police service knew or ought reasonably to have known about before he was killed by a man about whom the vulnerable adult had made a number of criminal complaints against.

A coroner who had conducted an inquest into the death in custody of a teenage boy had to recuse himself from presiding over a fresh inquest into the death as he had previously expressed decided views on matters which would be important in the later inquest.

The court gave guidance as to the way in which a coroner should exercise his discretion under the Coroners Rules 1984 r.7(4) to permit the Independent Police Complaints Commission to attend a post-mortem which the coroner had directed.

The United Kingdom's duty under the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 Art.2 to investigate a suicide at a young offender institution had been discharged without there having been a full public inquiry.

An inquest was the normal method, absent an exceptional set of circumstances, of the state discharging its investigative obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 Art.2 where there had been a death of a prisoner in custody; where an inquest did not bring within its scope sentencing policy and broad issues of government funding or policy, it was not incumbent upon the state under Art.2 to set up a public inquiry.

Permission to appeal against a decision to quash an inquest verdict of unlawful killing was not granted where the coroner had not applied the correct test to the particular case of self defence when evaluating whether it was safe to leave a rejection of self defence to the jury and where on the facts of the case the verdict of unlawful killing should not have been left to the jury.

A verdict of unlawful killing was quashed as the evidence was such that a coroner's jury would have had difficulty in being able to safely conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that the claimant chief inspector had not discharged his firearm in the honest belief, however mistaken, that a fellow officer was under imminent threat of being shot.

In the case of a patient who died after being restrained by the police while awaiting medical attention, the coroner had not erred in leaving the question of unlawful killing to the jury, but his direction to the jury about causation had been sufficiently confusing to render the verdict unjust.

On an application by a witness for anonymity on the basis of safety fears, there had to be reasonable grounds that showed that the witness's fears were objectively justified.

A coroner had an obligation to consider whether the State's investigative duties under Art.2 European Convention on Human Rights had been complied with, and that obligation existed even if the Human Rights Act 1998 had not been in force at the date of the death. The coroner had erred in holding that there was no evidence upon which it could be argued that the police and local authority had failed to fulfil their investigative duties under Art.2.

Where the coroner refused to allow the prison officer responsible for the cancellation of a 15-minute watch to be called to give evidence, there had been insufficiency of inquiry.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had the capacity to make submissions on human rights law and practice applicable in Northern Ireland if so permitted or invited by courts or tribunals concerned with issues of such law and practice.

Public scrutiny and the involvement of a deceased's next of kin were not requirements that needed to be discharged for a State to fulfill its duty to investigate a death under Art.2 European Convention on Human Rights. An inquest jury could give a verdict of neglect when necessary so as to comply with Art.2 of the Convention. * Leave to appeal to the House of Lords granted.

A successful application for judicial review of a verdict that a man who died in police custody died by misadventure where the coroner's reasons for not allowing the deceased's family's medical evidence could not be sustained.

An unsuccessful application for judicial review of a coroner's jury's verdict of accidental death where the deceased died in police custody after swallowing a substantial quantity of crack cocaine.

A coroner need not leave all possible verdicts to a jury, it was sufficient for him to leave those verdicts which realistically reflected the thrust of the evidence as a whole, and on that basis he could not be criticised for not leaving a particular verdict to the jury. The European Court jurisprudence required a modest adjustment of the Gough test. The court must first ascertain all the circumstances that had a bearing on the suggestion of bias and it must then ask whether those circumstances would lead a fair-minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility, or a real danger, the two being the same, that the tribunal was biased.

The respondents were not entitled to escape liability for contempt of court by reason of the fact that the full amount of expenses they would incur in attending a coroner's inquiry had not been tendered to them.

In an application for judicial review where a coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing, had the coroner not left the option of unlawful killing to the jury he would have usurped its function. Accordingly, the application for judicial review was refused.