VLO fine reduced from £1.2m to £300,000 on appeal
HHJ Cole and two Justices at Worcester Crown Court, sitting in Birmingham, reduced a fine from the £1.2m imposed by DJ Strongman at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court in October to £300,000.
Harry Vann, instructed by Sally Roff of DAC Beachcroft appeared for the successful Appellant.
The case arose out of an accident on 21st June 2021 when a customer’s foot was run over by an FLT at a building supplier’s premises. The driver, who was fully trained, operating a speed limited truck, equipped with reversing alarm and beacon, failed to notice the customer’s presence during a reversing manoeuvre.
Substituting Medium for High Culpability in the Court below, HHJ Cole accepted the Appellant’s submission that the expert evidence on both sides supported only a finding of Medium Culpability and that there was a localised failure to implement the company’s systems, which were described as “good” by even the Crown’s expert.
Having arrived at a figure of £300,000 after adjustment for the injuries, HHJ Cole reduced that figure to £225,000 to take account of the company’s mitigation.
The company’s turnover was £2.25bn, although it had made very significant losses over the preceding 5 years. In order to make the appropriate adjustment to take account of its status as a VLO with a turnover very substantially greater than £50m, HHJ Cole considered the appropriate approach was to double the fine from £225,000 o £450,000 before reducing the figure by a full one-third for the company’s prompt guilty plea.
After reference to Whirlpool, Places for People, and the case of Shell UK Ltd & Ampelmann in which Harry appeared together with Dominic Kay KC, Simon Antrobus KC and Jack Murphy in December 2023, this case is a further illustration that the Court may well consider that a doubling of the fine which would apply to a Large Company may be the appropriate approach for a VLO. Moreover, the use of extravagant multipliers and an abandonment of the Guideline altogether, as is sometimes suggested to be supported by Places for People, are not appropriate – not only is it necessary for the Court to follow the structure of the Guideline, but also regard should be had for the figures which would apply to Large Companies and where the proposed elevated fine would fall, even where the fine imposed is of a very much greater size than a Large Company would have been ordered to pay.