An FMC study of 18 months of unpublished Ministry of Labour data has found that two‐thirds of corporations that fought Occupational Health and Safety Act charges through a trial were found guilty on at least one charge.
Only 6% of corporations fought their charges all the way through to a trial. Of those, two‐thirds were found guilty of at least one charge, and one‐third were found not‐guilty of all charges. Thus, statistically, the odds of success were reasonable, but not great for corporations that went all the way to trial.
Individual defendants, such as supervisors and workers, tended to do better when they went to trial. Only 8% of individual defendants fought their charges through to a trial, and of those, half won and half lost.
The complete study, which was released in May 2012, may be accessed here.
