Le Maitre - Perfectly Legal But Boy Does It Suck

[ImagineerTom]

Once a company is in receivership / liquidation it’s existing shareholders, directors etc are all replaced instantly be the official receiver (government licensed accountant) who is obligated to act in the best interests of winding up the business ONLY. 

So the original owners managers are now no longer employed by the company so have no obligations to turn up in court. The receiver might attend a court hearing if they believe they could swing the result in a way that would save / make the business money but in a case like this (where the guilt of the company isn’t really in question) they wouldn’t attend since to do so would involve spending money on legal advice and their own wages to attend- reducing the amount of money that can be used to pay back debts which they can’t do. 
 

there’s an ethical argument that leMaitre original management should have attended court but they couldn’t actually be involved (because they no longer work for the business) and I’d guess if you’ve been running a business for years that has had a lot of accidents, a death toll and kept being critiqued for its safety and operational procedures “ethical actions” probably aren’t high on their list?

[Jivemaster]

Was there no employer's liability insurance at the time of the accident, shouldn't the insurers have had a responsibility too? Assuming that the incident occurred at a time when the insurance was in place, the company and it's insurers should have each had a liability, -it's what insurance is for.

[gareth]

5 hours ago, ImagineerTom said:

there’s an ethical argument that leMaitre original management should have attended court

The people I referred to are the company directors of the original, and also the new, Le Maitre - not employees.

[kerry davies]

Quote

 .... leMaitre original management should have attended court but they couldn’t actually be involved (because they no longer work for the business)

As far as I can make out, Tom, the same three people have been and still are the owners and managers of all the companies involved for decades. Le Maitre Fireworks became Le Maitre Ltd, then became LM140121 Ltd and have again become Le Maitre Ltd. The management has not changed and the directors at any one time are Mr and/or Mrs Wilson and Ms Cornacchia. There are procedures that the CPS can use when accused persons refuse to attend sentencing but apparently not when it is a corporate entity despite the introduction of the "controlling mind" concept.

I don't know if the metamorphosis always coincided with incidents or whether any of the fines were ever paid but it isn't satisfactory of the company, the directors or the UK legal system. It isn't (in my opinion only) a straightforward liquidation when the company is resurrected by the same people at the same premises serving the same customers with the same product that caused the fatality.

[Ynot]

I suspect that in many other industries, if there was even a minor (eg up to and including non-fatal) incidence that perhaps was repeated following similar 'phoenix-like' resurrections, there could well be an outcry from the public aspect - eg the users of the product may well revolt and black-ball said products until such time as those company owners accepted the liability by way of recompense/settlement of fines..

But as LeM have such a large market share in THIS industry, I suspect that this would be a case of cutting the throats of so many customers who rely on their pyro for hundreds of companies nationwide... 
It's all very well looking at Sky High, or other suppliers, but as I mentioned before, that would involve either significant reinvestment in hardware and/or adaptors for the different effects platforms. Which may be viable for larger users, but maybe not so for those at the lower/middle scale operators...

Hmmm... (tm)

[ImagineerTom]

8 hours ago, gareth said:

The people I referred to are the company directors of the original, and also the new, Le Maitre - not employees.

Yes I know that (and directors are employees btw). But legally once old LM is in receivership they loose their titles and or cannot actually do anything as the receiver is completely in charge. 
The new LM is legally a totally different company so is not the one being taken to court so again, no legal obligation for them to have any involvement at all. Not at all ethical but legally correct in a case where the old LM company is the one being prosecuted. 

If an action is launched (criminal or regulatory) which assigns liability to individuals then it’s a different matter and those people would have to attend but from my reading of this it was a claim against (old) LM company for breaching it’s obligations and liabilities. 

[vlfaudio]

There's some relevant info from the HSE here

 

[gareth]

3 hours ago, ImagineerTom said:

Yes I know that (and directors are employees btw)

Not necessarily. A company director or secretary is an office holder, not an employee. They can become an employee in addition, if a contract of employment or some other service agreement is in place which requires them to provide specified services or duties in a certain way (and that's where a lot of the IR35-type criteria start to become relevant) - but just being a director of a company does not necessarily make one an employee by default.

 

[paulears]

It's probably about time that the Government reviewed the phoenix resurrections, especially now the process of shutting a debt ridden company down and starting again, debt free - the so called SpongeBob Plan, is so common.

I suppose the entire point of a limited liability company is that the directors are NOT responsible for the debts of the company - The outlay to start a Ltd Company has always been dirt cheap, ever since you did it through Exchange & Mart newspaper for a few pounds. Nothing has really changed in at least 50 years. What has changed is that doing this is now a standard business practice, and my only big debt after being self-employed for over 20 years was where a company did this, then tried to get me to work for them again - same people, same business, same phone numbers. The inference was that if I did more work, I might get some of the amount owed -although that was 'goodwill' - not a right of course. I rejected the offer. 

They genuinely did not think they had done anything wrong? I think that unless the Directors operated illegally, or while knowing they were insolvent there is anything legally wrong with what they did. Moral or ethical considerations are not really reasons to disbar somebody from Directorship.

It stinks. However, it's not a legal stink. Customers have choice. If this topic generates business for the competitors of Le Maitre, so be it. 

[sandall]

10 minutes ago, paulears said:

my only big debt after being self-employed for over 20 years was where a company did this, then tried to get me to work for them again

In my freelance TV days I worked for 2 companies that were constantly teetering on the edge. For the studio I only accepted another day's work when they had paid for the last (so when they folded I only lost 1 day's fee); for the facilities house they made sure any outstanding invoices were paid before the Christmas party 🙂.

[Stuart91]

30 minutes ago, paulears said:

It's probably about time that the Government reviewed the phoenix resurrections, especially now the process of shutting a debt ridden company down and starting again, debt free - the so called SpongeBob Plan, is so common.

What really sticks in the throat is when it's clearly a pre-engineered plan, that the company have followed from the start with the clear intention of dodging debt. 

(Hint: any festival that has the year as part of their company name may well be planning this kind of manoeuvre)

 

Back to pyro/fireworks and safety - how common are accidents in the industry as a whole? Is it common for fireworks factories to have a fatal accident every decade or so? Or are the various incarnations of Le Maitre all particularly inept?

[KevinE]

There is/was a fireworks company not far from me who were often having fires and explosions, and I suppose it's that type of industry, explosives after all. And, to be fair, it doesn't matter how many special tools or instructions you give employees, they will always find a way around them if it makes their work easier. That includes simple things like safety glasses or gloves. If someone forgets to put their glasses on and gets swarf in their eye, its the employer's fault for not training them properly in the error of their ways, not the employee's fault. And the papers will report it so and the courts will find it so.

[paulears]

I suppose some careers put you in more danger than others. You can take as many precautions as you like, but some professions have higher injury rates than others that risk assessment cannot do anything about. One of my family members got a kettle of boiling water in the face when the door was opened. Luckily his eye will mend they think. Munitions workers in WW2 got blown up fairly often. However, most employers have their staff covered, insurance wise. In the case we are discussing, one thing jumps out. Insurance - if it was in place at the time, then the insurance should have covered this, even if the company later shut down. Not having appropriate insurance would indicate that the directors in place at the time should have been responsible individually. It would also seem to be linked to the fact the Directors were not disqualified - so one wonders if the blame is not so pointed as we are assuming. Frankly, we are guessing, and surely the HSE would have prevented the issue of any licences if they were concerned?

[gareth]

12 hours ago, KevinE said:

There is/was a fireworks company not far from me who were often having fires and explosions, and I suppose it's that type of industry

It absolutely is not "that type of industry"! Outside of theatre, I work in the firework business - as do a couple of other BR members that I know - and I can assure you that safety is taken very seriously. If this company that you speak of was "often having fires and explosions", they shouldn't have been in business as they clearly don't have a clue. (Who is/was it, by the way? If it was a proper firework company and they 'often' had explosions at their facility, I feel certain I'd have heard about them!)

I can think of a very, very small number of instances of firework-related industrial accidents in the last few years aside from Le Maitre - a couple of which did involve fatalities. Festival Fireworks in East Sussex is the one that springs immediately to mind, where a couple of firefighters lost their lives (it was found that they were storing fireworks in a way which wasn't in line with their license - two of the company directors served time in prison for manslaughter). Then there was SP Fireworks in Staffordshire - which turned out to be the result of fireworks being imported and sold by an idiot who thought he knew better than the HSE and ended up killing two of the guys who were working for him.

Unlike these cowboys, though, the majority of firework companies in the UK take great care and pride in how they operate their licensed storage facilities.

The trouble is that the press on the whole don't know the difference between a 'firework factory' and licensed storage. There's virtually no display firework manufacturing in the UK these days - the last company which used to do this on any sort of scale (Kimbolton) went bust a while ago.

 

[kerry davies]

The Festival Fireworks fiasco is a case in point. The father was charged so the two sons did a phoenix, the elder son then got charged and before you could blink the remaining son had done another phoenix and was running the company while his father and brother were doing time. I can't locate the database since Brexit but the majority of explosives fatalities are related to manufacture rather than usage while the vast majority of "minor" injuries, as is to be expected, involve young people and misuse of fireworks. 

I can no longer find the EIDAS (explosives incidents database advisory service) database but from memory manufacture causes four or five times as many fatalities as any usage including quarrying and demolition.