MA Court rules LIFE CARE CENTERS OF AMERICA can't be tried criminally

The Highest Court in Massachusetts in 2010 concluded that a corporation could not be convicted of involuntary manslaughter, based on a theory of corporate criminal liability established by aggregating the knowledge and actions of multiple employees that were at worst merely negligent (i.e., a nursing home employee's removal, from a patient's medical chart, of a doctor's order that the patient wear a security bracelet; the knowledge of various employees that the patient was supposed to wear a security bracelet and tended to attempt to leave the nursing home; the knowledge of a nursing supervisor that the security bracelet order had been removed from the patient's chart and her failure to have the order reentered on the chart; and the failure of a substitute nurse to check that the patient was wearing the security bracelet), in the absence of evidence that at least one employee acted, or failed to act, with the requisite mental state of wanton or reckless conduct.
This court concluded that a corporation could not be convicted of neglect of a resident of a long-term care facility, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 38, based on a theory of corporate criminal liability established by aggregating the knowledge and actions of multiple employees that were at worst merely negligent, in the absence of evidence that at least one employee committed abuse, mistreatment, or neglect while acting with the requisite mental state of knowing and wilful conduct.
LIFE CARE CENTERS OF AMERICA, INC., COMMONWEALTH vs., 456 Mass. 826