Director of Public Prosecutions v TN
| Jurisdiction | Ireland |
| Judge | Clarke C.J.,MacMenamin J.,Charleton J. |
| Judgment Date | 30 November 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] IESCDET 200 |
| Court | Supreme Court |
| Date | 30 November 2018 |
[2018] IESCDET 200
An Chúirt Uachtarach
The Supreme Court
DETERMINATION
Clarke C.J.
MacMenamin J.
Charleton J.
| COURT: Court of Appeal |
| DATE OF ORDER: 20th June, 2018 |
| DATE OF PERFECTION OF ORDER: 24th August, 2018 |
| THE APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL WAS MADE ON 29th August, 2018 AND WAS IN TIME. |
This determination concerns a decision of the Court of Appeal made on 29 January 2018. This was an appeal pursuant to section 23(3)(b) of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010 for determination that a court of trial in directing a verdict of not guilty was wrong in law and that the evidence adduced in the proceedings sufficed to be such as the jury might reasonably be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt the person's guilt in respect of the offence concerned.
TN was indicted for holding or disposing of waste in a manner that was likely to cause environmental pollution on dates between February 2007 and November 2008. A trial took place before a jury and Judge McCartan over several weeks in 2015 but on 27 October 2015 the trial judge directed the acquittal of the accused on the basis that he was not a manager of the facility at which the alleged pollution took place.
It was argued on appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions that Judge McCartan had made an error in terms of defining, for the purpose of ordering an acquittal by direction, who was a manager within the meaning of section 9(1) of the Waste Management Act 1996. This provides that where an offence ‘has been committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a person being a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate’ then that person will also be liable to be proceeded against ‘and punished as if he’ or she ‘were guilty of’ the relevant offence.
The view of the Court of Appeal was that for someone to be a manager that person does not have to have overall control of a body corporate or to be responsible for everything that happens in every branch but, rather, like a bank, a person can be a local or branch manager without necessarily running a nationwide or international operation.
On this, the view of the Court of Appeal is well expressed in the following paragraphs which summarise their view of the law:
26. While the Court has taken some time to refer to some of the authorities that were opened to the trial court and to this Court, it is somewhat hesitant about the continuing relevance of some of the older authorities. The Waste Management Act 1996 is a modern statute. The phrase ‘Director, Manager, Secretary or other similar officer of a body corporate or a person who is purporting to act in any such a capacity’ must be seen in a modern context. It is to be noted that the section deals with directors, managers, secretaries or other similar officers of a body corporate. It is clear therefore that the individuals must hold responsibility at a corporate level. The manager of an individual branch of a bank is not to be equated with a manager of the bank. At the same time it must be appreciated that time has moved on since the discussions in Gibson v. Barton [1875] L.R. 10 QB 329. Nowadays it is not unusual to find Finance Directors, Human Resource Directors and IT Directors in large...
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DPP v T.N.
...filed in response, the following question was identified in the Determination of this Court as being appropriate for a further appeal ( [2018] IESCDET 200): “Where, as in section 9(1) of the Waste Management Act 1996, a statute provides that where an offence ‘has been committed by a body co......