중대재해처벌법위반죄와 산업안전보건법위반죄의 죄수관계에 관한 연구 – 대법원 2023. 12. 28. 선고 2023도12316 판결을 중심으로 -

As the scale and frequency of industrial accidents have increased in our society, along with the resultant social issues, the "Serious Accidents Punishment Act" was enacted on January 26, 2021. This legislation is seen as overcoming the limitations of the previous legal system, which placed responsibility for industrial accidents solely on the on-site safety officers and individual accident-prone workers. It now provides a clear legal basis to impose direct responsibility on business operators and managers. Through this act, our society expects to prevent accidents across industrial sites in advance and to facilitate reasonable punishment for liability in case of accidents. However, the "Serious Accidents Punishment Act" has been criticized since its enactment for potentially violating the constitutional principles of clarity and prohibition of excessive regulation. One significant issue raised is the problem of overlapping legislation with the "Occupational Safety and Health Act," which already regulates safety and health obligations. This problem of overlapping legislation has emerged as a critical issue affecting the application of both laws simultaneously, impacting the relationship between different offenses. This paper analyzes various lower court cases regarding the relationship between the "Serious Accidents Punishment Act" and the "Occupational Safety and Health Act" and examines how the Supreme Court has ruled on the relationship between these two laws. In particular, this paper analyzes a key ruling in which the Supreme Court considered the relationship between these two laws as concurrence of offences rather than a substantive concurrence, investigating the court's specific reasoning and exploring the implications derived from this interpretation.