Corporate Manslaughter: Revisiting the Lucy Letby case

sultanhassan27

2 years ago

This post was contributed by Dr Laura Lammasniemi, Module Convenor for Criminal law.

If you follow English news, you would have undoubtedly heard of Lucy Letby. In August 2023, Letby was sentenced to a whole life order (LINK TO EARLIER BLOG: WHAT ARE WHOLE LIFE ORDERS? THE SARAH EVERARD CASE) after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital, in 2015 and 2016, where she worked as a neonatal nurse at the time.

Her crimes are horrific, and she has been sentenced for those crimes. Her conviction, however, might not be the end of the prosecutions in the case. In October 2023, police said they have launched a corporate manslaughter investigation at the Chester Hospital that employed Lucy Letby.

Can the organisation, Chester Hospital, that employed her have culpability for the crimes too?

In short: yes, if the high threshold for corporate manslaughter is met. Corporate manslaughter charges can be brought against an organisation that has been grossly negligent, resulting in death. Under section 1 of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, the investigation needs show the following:

the defendant is a qualifying organisation;
the organisation owed a relevant duty of care to the deceased;
there was a gross breach of that duty by the organisation;
the way in which its activities were managed or organised by its senior
management was a substantial element in the breach; and
the gross breach of the organisation’s duty caused or contributed to the death.

This is a high threshold to meet.

There have been investigations and even charges against NHS Trusts before but never a conviction. There have been just over 30 corporate manslaughter convictions since the law came into force. The small number of convictions is illustrative of the complexity of the offence. Most of these have been against companies where a serious management failure led to the death of a worker.

The Letby case is obviously different. Here the crimes were committed intentionally by Letby, and the case against the hospital would be based on failing to prevent those crimes.

The investigation will in specific need to demonstrate that there was a gross breach of duty in their failure to prevent her crimes. During Letby’s trial, the court heard that several deaths that occurred in 2015 and 2016, but police were only contacted in 2017, and Letby was arrested in 2018. During her trial, several consultants testified about how they had repeatedly raised alarm. During the trial and the in media they spoke of how their attempts to have Letby removed from her role were ignored. There was no formal investigation into Letby’s actions until a year after the first concerns had been raised. Consultants in question have repeatedly said that babies could have been saved if hospital management had listened and acted sooner. It is for the police and CPS to decide whether these actions amount to corporate manslaughter.

Even if they do, it might be years before the case is concluded. After all, the investigation into the catastrophic fire in Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people in 2017 is still ongoing.

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