Chain of Responsibility

In the Australian transportation industry, Chain of Responsibility is a legal principle which allows an organization to hold supervisors accountable for setting unrealistic expectations that present a safety hazard.

For example: in a trucking business, a dispatcher might try to increase profit margin by reducing all of the drivers' schedules by 10%. The drivers in turn may try to satisfy these unrealistic deadlines by driving recklessly or with too little sleep. Under Chain of Responsibility, the dispatcher has an incentive to set feasible performance expectations, by holding the dispatcher responsible for any accidents that might result from an unreasonably set schedule. The dispatcher would be limited to giving the driver a realistic deadline for a load, obeying all the speed limits along the way, allow for traffic congestion at the relevant times of day, and including time for meal and rest breaks. A dispatcher who issued an unrealistic deadline could be convicted of an offense, especially in the event of a traffic accident.

In France in the 1990s, a shipper who ordered a truck driver to observe an unrealistic schedule was jailed for manslaughter. Also in France, Maurice Papon was found to have been part of the chain of responsibility for the Vichy Government deportation of French Jews.

In the United States a court examined the chain of responsibility and found McDonald's to be liable for a customer who was scalded when she spilled coffee in her lap. Cups now bear the warning imprimateur "Caution. Contents may be hot."

In Israel the Winograd Commission into the Second Lebanon War considered the chain of responsibility in looking at Ministerial Accountability: "In a case where a minister acts according to an opinion that is based on unreliable information, personal responsibility extends to accountability. Accountability, on the other hand, can turn into personal responsibility when failure at lower levels is the result of a lack of proper supervision on the part of higher echelons. Therefore, the existence of a hierarchy of authority creates a chain of responsibility; and in case of a failure, the responsibility passes from lower echelons to higher ones."

ee also

*Quintinshill rail crash
*Vicarious liability
*Maurice Papon

External links

* [http://www.bu.edu/trl/12/pb.html Essay from the Republic of Letters in re McDonald's case]
* [http://www.idi.org.il/english/article.asp?id=26042007090945 The Winograd Commission]