Supreme Court Expands Site Manager Liability for Serious Accidents

The scope of legal liability for site managers' safety negligence has widened. The Supreme Court ruled that managers must take responsibility for serious accidents if they were aware of potential dangers at a site and failed to address them, even if they did not directly order specific hazardous work. It has become difficult for managers to escape legal responsibility if they could have reasonably foreseen the possibility of dangerous operations. This ruling expands a site manager's liability beyond directly ordered tasks to encompass all foreseeable risks that could arise at a construction site.

According to legal circles on the 20th, the Supreme Court's First Division overturned a lower court's ruling that had acquitted construction site manager Mr. A of some charges, including professional negligence resulting in death and violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The case has been sent back to the Daejeon District Court. The accident occurred in June 2020 at a residential apartment construction site in Sejong City, where a worker in his 20s, identified as Mr. B, a foreign national from Russia, fell to his death while climbing onto a climbing formwork to dismantle the outer wall of the rooftop.

The Supreme Court ruled that the site manager should have taken preventive safety measures against foreseeable risks if they were aware that the worker might use dangerous methods. In particular, the court pointed to the site manager's responsibility for failing to provide clear safety instructions to the foreign worker, who had limited Korean language proficiency, stating that a significant causal relationship between the violation of safety duties and the death was recognized even without specific directives.