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FARIMAN WHK
Lawyers are an engineer's new best friend. Why? Engineers working in Australia could be held personally liable for their designs where someone using or working on it dies or is injured in a workplace accident. Although corporate manslaughter currently exists in England, the concept was rejected in the recent review and harmonisation of health and safety laws around Australia.
"Watch this space," Barrister at Francis Burt Chambers, Maria Saraceni said.
"Other than for the ACT, corporate manslaughter is not currently a feature of health and safety laws in Australia. However, it is feasible that in the short term there will be with the increasing tendency to hold individuals accountable for their shortcomings. People have been discussing this for a long time and we typically follow the English model," she said.
"Prosecution for workplace safety breaches is now in the realm of criminal laws .This means that once convicted an individual not only gets a monetary penalty but also a criminal record. It works differently to negligence, breach of contract or a professional indemnity claim."
"If a petroleum engineer is found guilty from a health and safety perspective, they will be dealt with in the criminal courts: their actions could constitute a criminal offence, they will get a record coupled with potential financial penalty and , if there is recklessness or gross negligence involved, a possible imprisonment term. This is without mentioning the obvious irreparable damage to their professional reputation," she said.
In recent times there have been a number of critical incidents involving some of the majors, including in August 09 the blow-out on the West Atlas drilling rig over PTTEP Australasia's Montara oilfield, and in April 2010 the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, drilling BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.
US authorities have filed the first criminal charges over the 2010 BP oil spill disaster which left 11 people dead. Former BP engineer Kurt Mix, 50, faces two criminal charges, accused of obstructing justice by trying to delete hundreds of text messages from his mobile phone.
Mix has been charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and released on US$100,000 bail. If convicted he
http://spenewsaustralasia.org/article.aspx?id=1564&p=1
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