ABSTRACT
Sports carry an element of risk of injury or even death. That may be part of their appeal and challenge. Chapter 4 was restricted to a socio-legal view of sports violence and nonfatal assaults under the statute Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and The Criminal Justice Act 1988. This chapter deals exclusively with some aspects of manslaughter. It begins with a generic overview of the two categories of involuntary manslaughter – constructive (unlawful act) manslaughter and manslaughter by gross negligence. It moves on to a summary of the challenges of applying common law manslaughter to a corporation. The ad hoc development of the law in this area and the appropriateness of the test of corporate manslaughter for large and complex organisations have been illustrated by the failures of the law to respond to, in particular, major disasters in the UK. This led to a lengthy process of legal reform which began in 1995 and, at the time of writing, saw the implementation of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act which came into effect on 6 April 2008.
