(159)  Corporate criminality

On 28 February 2002 the Crown Office announced that the gas company Transco is to be prosecuted over the deaths of four members of the same family in a gas explosion at their Larkhall home in 1999.  The company will be charged with culpable homicide or, in the alternative causing death by a contravention of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.  It is believed to be the first prosecution of a company for culpable homicide in Scots law.  Further on the subject of corporate crime see R Mays, The criminal liability of corporations and Scots law (2000) 4 Edinburgh Law Review 46, and J P and A L Minkes, Mays on corporate crime: a transdisciplinary perspective (2001) 5 Edinburgh Law Review 242.