Since 1965, 19,471 people have been killed at work.

Last year, the work fatality rate ran at the equivalent of more than one worker killed every working day.

Companies whose negligence leads to death will henceforward, following two recent legal developments, be exposed to greater danger of conviction under both the ordinary criminal law and safety legislation.In December 1994 OLL Ltd became the first company in English legal history to be convicted of the common law crime of manslaughter.

Then, in the same month, in a case involving a death at a British Steel plant in Sheffield, the Court of Appeal ruled that, subject to a defence of reasonable practicability, s.3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA) imposed absolute criminal liability.

These developments raise important issues for those engaged in corporate work.OLL Ltd became the first company in English legal history to be convicted of homicide on 8 December 1994 (The Times, 9 and 13 December) and was fined £60,000.

Peter Kite, 45, its managing director, also became the first director to be given an immediate custodial sentence for a manslaughter conviction arising from the operation of a business and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

Both defendants were found guilty on four counts of manslaughter, arising from the deaths of four teenagers on 22 March 1993.

The teenagers drowned off Lyme Regis while on a canoe trip organised by the defendant leisure activity company.

OLL Ltd (formerly Active Leisure and Learning Ltd) was the company that ran the centre.

The same charges were brought against Joseph Stoddart, manager of the centre, although he was acquitted on the direction of the judge when the jury at Winchester Crown Court failed to reach a verdict after deliberating for nine hours.An appalling catalogue of errors led to the deaths of the four teenagers, who drowned having been in the sea for over four hours after their canoes capsized.

According to those familiar with canoeing, the trip should never have taken place.

Prior to the trip, the teenagers had received only one hour of tuition in a swimming pool by unqualified staff.

The weather forecast on the day of the trip had not been checked properly, distress flares were not provided by the company, and the only safety equipment possessed by the instructors was a whistle.

The students' canoes did not have 'spray decks' to keep out water.

Nine months before the disaster two instructors had left the company because they were not satisfied with its safety policy.

One wrote a letter to the managing director, Mr Kite, urging him to take a 'careful look' at safety, otherwise he might find himself explaining 'why someone's son or daughter will not be coming home'.Giving evidence, one witness, a former instructor at the company, testified that the safety standards were 'practically non-existent'.

First aid kits, flares, hooded waterproofs, and tow ropes were not provided.

(Saving on these costs, although endangering children, clearly benefited those who enjoyed the company's profits: OLL Ltd made a profit of £242,603 in the year ending October 1992 (20 weeks before the drownings), 13% up on previous figures.)The activity centre did not alert the rescue services when the canoeists failed to arrive at their destination on time, as the centre was unaware of what time the students had departed.

The planned trip - two miles on open sea - was alarmingly unsuitable for such novices, and the coastguard had not been alerted.

The court was told that the instructors were barely competent to make the trip themselves, let alone supervise the eight children and their teacher.When, very belatedly, Mr Stoddart did begin to worry about the safety of those on the trip, he tried to look for them himself by driving a car along coastal roads before he alerted the coastguards.

When he did alert the rescue services he wrongly told them that the children had flares.The Lyme Regis conviction may well have symbolic significance, and have a chastening effect on businesses which currently adopt a cavalier attitude to safety.

How far it will affect the number of prosecutions in future is questionable.Under current law, a company is guilty of manslaughter if death results from its 'gross negligence'.

This is a vague concept, whose definition is ultimately a matter for a jury.

It is the jury which has to decide whether the corporate carelessness in question went 'beyond a mere matter of compensation between subjects and showed such a disregard for the life and safety of others as to amount to a crime against the state and conduct deserving of punishment' (per Lord Hewart CJ in R v Bateman, quoted with approval by Lord Mackay in R v Adomako [1994] 2 All ER 79).Lord Mackay has said that the decision whether the negligence is culpable at a civil or criminal level is 'supremely a jury question' (ibid).

It is worthy of note, however, that there is evidence that the public are increasingly anxious about people being exposed to unnecessary risk from companies compromising on safety for commercial reasons.

This point is acknowledged by the Law Commission in its consultation paper (1994, no.135) on involuntary manslaughter.In answer to the question: 'Which company personnel can incriminate their employer?' the doctrine of 'identification' was developed by which a corporation can be found criminally liable through the conduct an d mental state of only certain personnel - those who represent its 'controlling mind'.

In a case in 1957, Lord Justice Denning (as he then was) encapsulated the idea in a renowned anthropomorphic metaphor: 'A company may in many ways be likened to a human body.

It has a brain and a nerve centre which controls what it does.

It also has hands which hold the tools and act in accordance with directions from the centre,' ([1957] 1 QB 159).Who are the people representing the 'controlling minds' of the corporation? They would normally be directors, or superior officers of the company.

The state of mind of these people is the state of mind of the company, and it is treated by the law as such.One abiding difficulty in this area of law, and possibly one of the chief reasons why no company before now has been convicted of manslaughter, is the rule against the 'aggregation of fault'.

Thus, if several directors were each aware of a few jigsaw pieces in the overall picture of an 'obvious risk', the company cannot be guilty.

Many of the companies implicated in work fatalities and public transport disasters operate with diffuse management systems and much delegated power systems, which entail that no single 'controlling mind' of the company has, as the law requires, the full mens rea, ie the mental element for the crime.The Lyme Regis case was, however, arguably atypical of corporate homicide scenarios.

The company OLL Ltd was small (Mr Kite and Mr Stoddart were the only people with directorial and managerial control over the company's affairs), so it was relatively easy to find the 'controlling minds'.

Also, the risks to which the students were exposed were serious and obvious and, critically, they were not technical or esoteric in any way (anyone can see the dereliction of duty involved in not providing competent supervisors, flares, a lookout boat, in not notifying the harbour authority etc).For the prosecution there was also the serendipitous evidence of the letter from the former employees, which indisputably made the managing director aware of the risks in question, risks which, as the prosecution was able to show, were not subsequently addressed with any seriousness.In R v British Steel plc [1994] The Times, 31 December, the Court of Appeal held that a corporate employer was not able to avoid liability for an offence under s.3(1) of HSWA 1974, on the basis that the company at 'directing mind' or senior management level was not involved in the offence, having taken all reasonable care to delegate supervision of the work in question.The case arose from the death of a worker at a British Steel (BS) plant on 29 July 1990.

The man was one of two subcontracted by BS to re-position a 7.5 tonne section of steel platform.

The contract was on a labour only basis, with equipment and supervision being provided by BS.

The platform had been cut free of nearly all its supports but not secured by a crane, when one of the men was working underneath it.

When the other man walked on the platform it crashed down, crushing the worker below.

S.3 of the 1974 Act provides: '(1) it shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that all persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.'On appeal, the company argued that, properly construed, s.3(1) permitted a company to escape criminal liability if at directing mind level it had taken reasonable care.

Their Lordships were invited to read s.3 as if the wo rds 'through senior management' appeared immediately after the word 'employer' in the section.

Counsel relied on the decision in Tesco Supermarkets v Nattrass [1972] AC 153, a case involving a charge under the Trades Description Act 1968.

This decision assisted BS because it turned on an important distinction between wrongdoing by those controlling the company at director level, and those merely working as employees.The Court of Appeal in BS rejected the applicability of Tesco on the grounds that first, the earlier case, unlike the later one, swung on legislation which afforded a 'due diligence' defence; and, secondly, the Tesco decision involved consumer protection, whereas the instant case involved health and safety, which, prima facie, required more stringent protection.The absolute nature of the prohibition in s.3(1) has been confirmed in earlier Court of Appeal decisions like R v Board of Trustees of the Science Museum [1993] 1 WLR 1171, and R v Associated Octel Co Ltd [1994] The Times, 4 August.

The court in British Steel took argument on the earlier decisions but ultimately followed the precedents by which, in normal circumstances, it would be bound.

Accepting British Steel's argument would have driven a juggernaut through the legislative scheme, as it would have followed that an employer could avoid criminal liability where the potentially harmful event was committed by someone other than a company director.The law has come a long way since the 18th century Lord Chancellor, Baron Thurlow, denying that corporations could be criminally liable, is reported to have asked: 'Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?' Now that the criminal law is taking a sterner attitude to reckless companies, it remains to be seen whether this engenders corporate consciences strong enough to prevail over commercial pressures.