Violation of Labour Safety Rules — Composition and Risk
Article 170 of the Criminal Code of Georgia establishes liability for violation of safety technique rules or other labour protection rules, committed by a person responsible for compliance with such rules, which caused less severe or severe damage to health. The charge therefore rests on two conditions: the violation must have been committed by the responsible person, and it must have resulted in injury to a person's health. Both elements must be proven beyond reasonable doubt before the qualification holds.
In defence practice, the space between these two elements is where the openings lie. Often it is unclear who was the person on whom responsibility for compliance rested — the manager, the supervisor, or the performer of the work. The statute attaches liability to the person responsible for observing the rules, and not to every member of an enterprise. The advocate's first task is therefore to establish the circle of responsibility and to show either that the accused does not fall within it, or that he did not violate the rule.
Sanctions Where Less Severe or Severe Injury Resulted
Where the violation caused less severe or severe damage to health, under the first part of the article the offender is punished by a fine or corrective labour for a term of up to one year, or by imprisonment for a term of up to two years. This spectrum means that even upon conviction the court has a choice ranging from a monetary penalty to imprisonment, and the quality of the defence determines where within that range the accused will land.
It matters that less severe and severe injury are distinct legal categories. Determining which category an injury falls into is a question of medical qualification, and it is precisely here that disputes arise: the defence will seek to establish that the injury is not severe, or that it does not stand in a causal relationship to the violation at all. Each of these outcomes dismantles the heavier qualification.
Violations Resulting in Death
Far graver is the qualification under the second part: the same act that caused the death of a person is punished by imprisonment for a term from two to five years, with deprivation of the right to hold an office or to carry out an activity for a term of up to three years or without it. Here causation is decisive: the death must be precisely the result of the violation of the rule, and not of an independent factor — the employee's own negligence, the intervention of a third party, or another circumstance.