In the North American
legal system
The contemporary national legal systems are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, statutory law, religious law or combinations of these. However, the legal system of each country is shaped by its unique history an ...
and in US
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration'' (OSHA ) is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agenc ...
regulations, willful violation or willful non-compliance is a violation of
workplace
A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of th ...
rules and policies that occurs either deliberately or as a result of neglect.
Definition
Willful violation is defined as an "act done voluntarily with either an intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to," the requirements of Acts,
regulations
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For ...
,
statutes
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
or relevant workplace policies. This is described with slightly different emphasis in an
OSHA
OSHA or Osha may refer to:
Work
* Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency of the United States that regulates workplace safety and health
* Occupational Safety and Health Act (United States) of 1970, a federal law in the Un ...
technical manual that a "willful violation exists under the Act where the evidence shows either an intentional violation of the Act or plain indifference to its requirements."
Criminal recklessness is similarly described in
Black's Law Dictionary
''Black's Law Dictionary'' is the most frequently used legal dictionary in the United States. Henry Campbell Black (1860–1927) was the author of the first two editions of the dictionary.
History
The first edition was published in 1891 by West P ...
as "Conduct whereby the actor does not desire harmful consequence but...foresees the possibility and consciously takes the risk," or alternatively as "a state of mind in which a person does not care about the consequences of his or her actions."
Black's Law dictionary
' 1053 (Bryan A. Garner ed., 8th ed. abr. 2005)
See also
* ("guilty act")
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* ("guilty mind")
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (also called "willful ignorance" or "contrived ignorance")
References
{{underwater diving, divsaf
American legal terminology
Law of negligence