Criminal Defence Lawyers in Workplace Accidents

Criminal Liability in Workplace Accidents

When a serious accident occurs at work, the Labor Inspectorate automatically sends the report to the Prosecutor's Office. We are not talking about fines, but about Prison Sentences for the businessman, the safety manager, or the site manager.

The Criminal Code punishes strictly (Art. 316 CP) not only the result (injury or death) but the danger created by the lack of safety measures. If a worker falls because there was no harness, the person responsible faces charges for Crime against Workers' Rights + Reckless Injury/Homicide.

Recklessness: Serious vs Professional

The key to the defence is strict qualification. The prosecution will always speak of "Serious Recklessness" (grave negligence) to ask for prison. Our strategy is to demonstrate that strict protocols were followed and that the accident was due to an unforeseeable fatality or the worker's own "Professional Recklessness" (overconfidence), which downgrades the matter to civil liability or a minor offence, avoiding prison.

Defence Strategies

The defence is built around the chain of command and the duty of supervision. Three lines stand out. The first is concurrent fault: proving that the worker disobeyed safety orders contributes to reducing the employer's liability, although it never automatically exonerates it, since the employer must protect the worker even from their own carelessness. The second is the delegation of duties: demonstrating that the administrator had effectively delegated the safety functions to a specialised, competent technician. And the third is compliance: an effective crime-prevention plan can exempt the company as a legal person, even if an individual is convicted. Identifying who actually held the duty of supervision is, in these cases, decisive.

The Criminal Procedure for Workplace Accidents: From Report to Trial

The investigation of a serious workplace accident usually begins before any formal complaint is filed. After an accident resulting in death or serious injury, the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate conducts a site visit, draws up a report and issues a technical assessment of the causes and of any prevention breaches detected; in parallel, the police prepare their incident report and, where there is a fatality, a forensic examiner intervenes. This body of documentation reaches the investigating court and forms the initial evidential backbone on which the entire case will be built. Examining and challenging it early is decisive for the defence.

During the investigation phase the court takes statements from those under investigation, from workers present and from prevention technicians, and gathers the risk assessment, the safety plan and the records of the injured worker's training and information. The defence takes part in every procedural step, proposes its own evidence and ensures the charge is directed at whoever genuinely held the duty of protection. Once this phase closes, the offence under Articles 316 and 317 is tried before the Criminal Court (Juzgado de lo Penal), as the penalty does not reach the threshold of the Provincial Court; it should be stressed that this matter never falls to the National Court.

Expert Evidence and the Causal Link in the Technical Defence

The core of the debate in these proceedings is technical before it is legal. The prosecution must establish three points: that a workplace risk-prevention rule was breached, that the breach created a serious and concrete danger to workers' life or physical integrity, and that this danger bears a causal relationship to the failure of the person under the duty. Reconstructing the accident, analysing the dynamics of the events and comparing the risk assessment against the reality of the workstation become the true battleground, where a solid expert report can dismantle the prosecution's theory.

For this reason the defence does not merely contest the Inspectorate's report: it submits its own engineering or prevention expert evidence, tests the causal chain and shows, where applicable, that the protective means were indeed provided, that the risk fell outside the conduct of the person charged, or that the operative cause was different from the one attributed. It is worth recalling that Article 316 punishes the mere serious danger, regardless of whether an accident actually occurs; proving that no such concrete danger existed, or that it did not stem from the breach attributed, is usually the most effective route to acquittal. The case law requires a real and verifiable risk, not a merely hypothetical one.

Shared Fault, Permitted Risk and the Worker's Own Conduct

Not every careless act by the injured worker exonerates the employer, yet it is not criminally irrelevant either. The defence examines the victim's conduct in detail to determine whether it was unforeseeable, wholly unrelated to the assigned tasks, or contrary to express and properly trained instructions. Where a worker independently assumes an extraordinary risk, disabling protections or ignoring clear warnings, the chain of attribution that the prosecution seeks to trace to the person responsible for safety may be broken or attenuated.

The category of permitted risk also comes into play here: every productive activity carries a margin of socially tolerated danger, and the criminal duty does not require eliminating all risk but providing the means legally required. Distinguishing between the risk the rule obliges one to neutralise and the residual, unavoidable one is key to confining liability. If the accident occurs within that tolerated margin, despite diligent compliance with prevention obligations, the offence is not made out. This line of defence requires documenting the training, the information and the controls actually implemented, as well as the degree of autonomy with which the worker acted at the time of the events.

Recargo de Prestaciones, Civil Liability and Prescription

It is important to clearly separate the consequences that a single accident may trigger through different channels. The recargo de prestaciones under Article 164 of the General Social Security Act is an administrative-labour consequence that increases the economic benefits payable by the employer when the accident results from a lack of safety measures; it is processed before the managing body and the social jurisdiction, and is neither a criminal penalty nor to be confused with one. The civil liability arising from the offence, which compensates the harm caused to the victim or their dependants, is dealt with within the criminal proceedings themselves or reserved for the civil courts.

The coexistence of the criminal penalty with the administrative sanction imposed by the labour authority requires careful attention to the non bis in idem principle, which prevents punishing the same facts twice where there is identity of subject, fact and legal basis; the interplay between the two routes must be analysed case by case. As for time limits, the offence under Articles 316 and 317, since its maximum penalty does not exceed three years' imprisonment, becomes time-barred after five years pursuant to Article 131 of the Criminal Code. Correctly calculating that period, and assessing whether a plea agreement or the suspension of a non-serious sentence is appropriate for someone with no prior record, is an essential part of the strategy.