John Cooper KC

Practice Areas

Criminal regulatory law, including manslaughter (Corporate and Gross Negligence Manslaughter), Health and Safety, Fire Safety, Environmental, Food Standards, Trading standards. He represents companies, directors, and senior managers in the Criminal Regulatory field in cases involving fatalities and serious injuries in the workplace and environmental damage. He advises corporations in relation to compliance and good practice in both fields.

Career

John has been one of the leading practitioners for over 20 years. He has appeared as an expert in this area in commercial litigation in the USA for Du Pont and has been involved in many of the key appellate cases that have shaped the law in the field of Health & Safety, including Friskies Petcare, HTM, Upper Bay, LFEPA v New Look, Willmott Dixon, Tangerine Confectionery and Aster Healthcare and Jeebun.

John was named ‘Health and Safety Junior of the Year’ in 2010 and ‘Health and Safety Silk of the Year’ in 2016 at the Chambers and Partners Bar Awards.

John was originally in chambers in Leeds and in addition to criminal work (including prosecuting the first marital rape prosecution) was first junior counsel in the longest ever UK group litigation case Griffiths and Ors v. British Coal Corporation [2007] EWHC 672 QB (the British Coal Respiratory Disease Litigation). He moved to Crown Office Chambers with Simon Antrobus KC in 2003 and together they set up the criminal regulatory team.

John has represented a range of clients in trials and guilty pleas. He was instructed in the longest ever health and safety trial (Willmott Dixon) and has represented Defendants in many groundbreaking cases including the successful defence of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in the first prosecution of a large organisation for corporate manslaughter. John has defended many individuals including a director in the first corporate manslaughter prosecution of Lion Steel. The director was acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter. John also successfully defended a director in the gross negligence manslaughter case of Cheshire Gates and in the last year successfully defended both a farmer accused of manslaughter (killing his son) in a farming accident and a director of a waste site also accused of gross negligence manslaughter.

John has defended a range of large clients at health and safety trials with acquittals in many cases concerning among others, William Hill (sign fall pedestrian fatality) Morrison Utilities (pipe stopper causes serious injury), Mitchells and Butler (norovirus outbreak) HTM (electrocution double fatality) Gatcombe Park (quad bike fatality) Norwest Holst in the Golden Jubilee bridge fatality re trial, represented York Racecourse in relation to a cycling fatality, AMEC in Manchester Spinningfields construction fatality, Heineken in relation to a fatality at a brewery and Brookfield Construction in a serious injury construction case.

He has appeared on behalf of clients in a range of fatality and serious injury cases involving guilty pleas in the past year involving Bannatyne Fitness Group (Swimming pool death) Creagh Concrete (Construction Site death) Tarmac Aggregates (quarry death) Kier Infrastructure (electrocution incidents) Northern Gas (fatality) and trials relating to 5 deaths at a scrap yard in Birmingham and a death at McLaren’s Brand Centre.

He has represented many very large organisations in the past few years including Nestle, W Morrison, Veolia, Mitie, Schindler, Bupa, Balfour Beatty, Redrow, The National Trust, Mitchells and Butler and Electricity North West.

In the environmental field John has represented Glastonbury Festival and successfully defended Red Industries in a 5-week trial relating to a cyanide leak. He successfully represented a party in the Penhallow fire. He has represented water companies and is currently defending a director in an explosion from at an Anaerobic Digestor plant.

John has acted for a wide range of clients in the health care field including NHS Trusts, the Priory Group and several Care homes and has conducted seminars in this field and given compliance advice.

In relation to the Fire Safety order John has represented Shell International and was in the Court of Appeal case of LFEPA v New Look. He has represented companies in several fire safety prosecutions.

John is instructed for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in relation to the Grenfell fire criminal investigation, for the Coleman Group in relation to the Didcot Power station criminal investigation and is instructed in the case of R v North East London NHS Foundation Trust (corporate manslaughter).