From Stepping-Stones to Throwing Stones: Officers’ Liability for Corporate Compliance Failures after Cassimatis

Australian corporate law allows for significant civil penalties to be imposed by a court on negligent corporate officers, including directors. For more than a decade, Australian Securities and Investments Commission used civil prosecutions for negligence exclusively in situations where an officer is alleged to have exposed their corporation to foreseeable risk of harm that would flow from a contravention by the corporation of a regulatory or disclosure obligation. This enforcement strategy—known as ‘stepping-stones’—has been strongly criticised, including by Rares J in his 2020 dissenting opinion in the Cassimatis appeal. This article explains how stepping-stones works as an enforcement strategy in the context of corporate compliance failures, explores the various criticisms of it, and argues for reform. It proposes a legislative alternative that rebalances individual officer liability, to reflect contemporary governance practices and encourage better management and oversight of non-financial risk in corporations.

Emergency COVID-19 Legislation in the Area of Insolvency and Restructuring Law

The appearance of the COVID-19 in Europe has prompted lawmakers to introduce public health measures that inevitably hurt the economy by reducing economic activity and business revenues. The foreseeable risk that the pandemic could be followed immediately by a bankruptcy epidemic led to the adoption of rules related to insolvency and restructuring laws in emergency legislation in most European countries. These rules aim at avoiding businesses to become insolvent either by suspending insolvency tests (see II.) or by providing cash support and debt moratoria (see III.). They may also contain measures that indirectly affect insolvency and restructuring proceedings (see IV.). This paper explains the logic behind emergency legislation and the specific rules adopted in European countries.

THE ANALYSIS OF SAFETY TOPICS IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

There are so many accidents and cases of health every year in all kinds of production lines at manufacturing industry. Accidents about the mechanical equipment, particularly workshop and manufacturing used in machining the metals, plastics and etc. may have consequences which range from a minor cut to the loss of a finger, hand or eye. The frequency of such accidents varies between 10 and 15 percent. Therefore, great care is required on the part of all machine operators to prevent either personal injury or injury to colleagues nearby. Every person has a duty to ensure that work is carried out in a safe manner and without foreseeable risk to the health and safety of either operators or the others. Occupational health and safety is a vital importance for businesses and the welfare and also the safety of staff. Machine-generated hazards can not be eliminated through inherently safe design, and then they must be reduced to an acceptable level, or the hazards to be isolated from the workers by allowing the minimum safety distances to be respected. All the man-machine interfaces that can affect the health and safety must be carefully established whether they are moving elements, machine components, noise, vibration, visible or invisible radiation hazardous materials or ergonomic hazard. The aim of this study is to introduce guidance on how to prevent or manage many of the health and safety planning on engineering in industries of all kinds.

Reconstructing unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter

In the last three decades, unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter has been subject to contradictory recommendations for reform. The debate has been dominated in that time by disagreement over the change of normative position, considered when attempting to justify liability for causing death in the commission of a crime with the objective risk of injury in the circumstances. The article suggests that this current definition of unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter is defensible if appropriately interpreted by the Supreme Court. The interpretation requires an intended unlawful act and the foreseeable risk of injury from a specific circumstance known to the defendant before the unlawful act.

Prawo właściwe dla skutków przelewu wierzytelności w stosunku do osób trzecich. Uwagi z perspektywy międzynarodowego prawa upadłościowego

The claims are rights in personam but the assignment of claims has a hybrid nature. Abolishing the “nomina ossibus inhaerent” rule has increased commercial significance of the assignment of claims. However, the contemporary legal situationleaves parties with great legal uncertainty, as to the question under which circumstances does the cross — borders assignment is valid. A recent judgment of the CJEU of 9 October 2019 (C — 548/18) in case BGL BNP Paribas SA v. TeamBank AG Nürnberg has augmented this uncertainty. The Luxemburg Court ruled that: “Article 14 of the Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 (‘Rome I’) must be interpreted as not designating, directly or by analogy, the applicable law concerning the third-party effects of the assignment of a claim in the event of multiple assignments of the claim by the same creditor to successive assignees”. In this situation, one would highly welcome an attempt to establish a new set of conflict of laws rules relating to the law applicable to third — parties effects of the assignment of claims. This attempt has recently been made by the European Commission in its Report “on the question of the effectiveness of an assignment or subrogation of a claim against third parties and the priority of the assigned or subrogated claim over the right of another person”, dated 29 September 2016. In the present article, the author reviews the most important propositions formulated in the conflicts’ doctrine through the “lens” of the international insolvency law. Multiply provisions of the Regulation (EU) 2015/848 of 20 May 2015 on insolvency proceedings (recast) — despite many judgments of the CJEU in this area — also lack certainty. Insolvency is a foreseeable risk, but without clear rules concerning the third parties’ effects of the assignment of claims, it may become unenforceable for the creditors of the assignor.

NUMERICAL MODELING OF COASTAL INUNDATION AND SEDIMENTATION BY STORM SURGE, TIDES, AND WAVES AT NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, USA

A nearshore hydrodynamic and sediment transport model was developed to simulate synthetic storms with design SLR scenarios surrounding the military installations in Norfolk, Virginia. Foreseeable risk and effect of storm surge damage accompanied by waves, tides, and Sea Level Rise (SLR) were examined. The final results include the evaluation of impacts for five SLR (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 m) and three storm conditions (50-yr, 100-yr return tropical storms, and a winter storm). Associated with the storm surge and SLR, extensive inundation will occur at the Naval Station Norfolk, approximately 70-80% of the Naval Station Norfolk under the 2-m SLR scenario. The calculated morphology changes indicate that the sediment movement mostly occurs in the navigation channels and the maximum depth changes are more than 3.0 m along the channels. The bed volume changes show that the storms induce a net volume loss within the channel area, an indication of channel flushing in the study area.