Overview
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ABSTRACT
Criminal liability applicable in the field of hygiene and security primarily concerns the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). If an accident with injuries or death occurs, the first person accountable to justice is the CEO, unless there has been prior delegation of responsibility, which has to meet three requirements: the delegatee must (i) be skilled in the field of the responsibilities delegated, (ii) have the required means, and (iii) have authority over subordinates. The French Labour Code includes provisions that forbid the CEO or the delegatee from (i) managing workers who are under a contract of employment with a subcontractor, (ii) subcontracting for the sole purpose of restricting the number of employees in the company, or (iii) moonlighting.
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Read the articleAUTHOR
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Sylvain MARTIN: Lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal - Member of SCM MadeLex
INTRODUCTION
To be criminally liable is to be found guilty of an offence: you have committed a prohibited act, or failed to perform an obligatory act, and a text stipulates that, in this case, you are liable to a fine or imprisonment.
The maintenance manager is directly concerned by a large number of texts of this nature. They must ensure the safety of the people they supervise, to avoid being prosecuted for manslaughter or unintentional injury, but they must also ensure the safety of external employees, while not exercising hierarchical authority over the latter, on pain of committing the offence of bargaining.
From Charybdis to Scylla, the maintenance manager does not have the right to navigate at sight. The aim of this article is to provide some legal guidelines to help you assume your responsibilities and avoid criminal liability.
If a court finds him personally liable, the maintenance manager may be fined out of his own savings, as his company is not entitled to pay on his behalf, except as indicated in the following Article. He may also be sentenced to a prison term, which will almost always be suspended, since serious accidents on an industrial site are involuntary, even if they are very regrettable.
In practice, the maintenance manager is rarely subject to civil liability. More often than not, his company is jointly and severally liable with him to pay the damages to which the victim is entitled. On the other hand, his company alone may be ordered to pay damages to third parties in the event of damage caused to customers (quality defects in the company's products or services) or to local residents (nuisance to neighbors).
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KEYWORDS
criminal liability | delegation of responsability | employee leasing offense | moonlighting
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Criminal liability in maintenance
Standards and norms
Standards catalog
Readers are referred to the article "Maintenance standards and regulations".
None of the standards cited in this article is mandatory, but they are useful for the maintenance manager, who can find best practices, definitions and French / English / German / Italian translations.
Legal scope of standards
Most standards are not mandatory...
Directory
AFIM – French association of maintenance engineers and managers
An association under the law of 1901, the AFIM brings together 1,500 members from 1,100 companies and organizations in 22 regions, covering a wide range of industrial, building and service maintenance activities.
Its mission is to promote and develop maintenance-related professions.
It offers vocational...
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The Ultimate Scientific and Technical Reference