Her Majesty’s Advocate v. Discovery Homes (Scotland) Limited and Richard Pratt [2010] HCJAC 47

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  • Published: 26 May 2010
  • Last edited: 3 Jun 2010

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Crown Appeal Against Sentence:- On 29 May 2008 the first respondent, a building contractor, was constructing houses in Dundee when one of its employees, Andrezej Freitag, fell from the third to the second storey of a block under construction and sustained injuries from which he died. The first respondent was indicted to Dundee Sheriff Court and pled to contravention of sections 2(1) and 33(1)(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 namely that they failed to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of one of their employees by failing to provide inter alia a guard-rail, barrier, or similar collective means of protection. The second respondent, a director of the first respondent was employed by the first respondent as site manager and was the sole full-time safety representative of the first respondent at the locus, pled guilty to a charge under section 37(1) of the 1974 Act. The sheriff fined the first respondent £5,000, discounted from £7,500, and the second respondent £4,000, discounted from £6,000. The pleas had been tendered at the earliest opportunity and the sheriff discounted the fines by a third to reflect those pleas. Here the Crown appealed against both sentences on the grounds that the starting off point selected by the sheriff was unduly lenient. In his report the sheriff stated that the fine imposed against the first respondent was limited as a substantial fine would almost inevitably result in the first respondents falling into administration or liquidation and the fine imposed was one which reflected the funds available to the first respondents. On behalf of the Crown it was submitted, referring to paragraph 25 of the Definitive Guideline issued by the (English) Sentencing Guidelines Council that:- "... where the [health and safety] offence is shown to have caused death, the appropriate fine will seldom be less than £100,000 and may be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds or more" albeit the offence was committed prior to the operative date of the Definitive Guideline. The court considered the appeal having regard to a number of reports by accountants instructed by the Crown and the respondents, which were not available to the sentencing sheriff to consider whether either of the sentences imposed could be held to be unduly lenient.

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