A Serious Workplace Injury Can Lead to Criminal Charges in California

Supervisors and managers can face personal criminal liability for willful safety violations in California. A company president was convicted of a felony in 2022, and on January 1, 2027 AB 2321 extends that to serious injuries. 

By Shawn Larry, J.D., Founder and Principal Investigator, California Labor Solutions 

After a serious workplace incident, a CEO or HR manager needs answers quickly. Is everyone safe? What has to be reported, and by when? Who is running the response? Then comes the question that shapes the next year: what did the organization know about the hazard beforehand, and what did it do about it? 

Assembly Bill 2321, approved and chaptered on September 30, 2026, as Chapter 936, Statutes of 2026, takes effect January 1, 2027. It expands Cal/OSHA’s investigative duties, broadens the existing framework that brings prosecutors into serious workplace incidents, widens the circumstances in which a willful safety violation becomes a crime, and allows Cal/OSHA to share certain protected information with law enforcement.

For leadership, the useful response is not to confirm that a safety policy exists. It is to examine how a concern actually travels from the person who raises it to a verified correction. 

Cal/OSHA’s jurisdiction reaches most private employers and state and local government employers, including cities, counties, school districts, and community college districts, subject to jurisdictional exceptions. (Lab. Code, §§ 6304, 3300.) This is not solely a private sector issue. 

What changes on January 1, 2027, and what already applies

AB 2321 amends six Labor Code sections: 6314, 6315, 6315.3, 6322, 6409.2, and 6425. None of those amendments is in force yet. Every change described in this section takes effect January 1, 2027. 

What already applies, today, is most of what the rest of this article covers: the duty to report a serious injury, illness, or death, the injury and illness prevention program requirements, Cal/OSHA’s authority to order evidence preserved, and criminal liability under section 6425 for a willful violation that causes death or permanent or prolonged impairment. AB 2321 does not create that criminal exposure. It widens it. 

Beginning January 1, 2027, under amended section 6315, Cal/OSHA’s Bureau of Investigations will be required to promptly investigate specified violations involving a death, or a serious injury or illness or serious exposure affecting five or more employees, or a request for prosecution from a Division representative. It will have to investigate accidents involving serious injury or illness or serious exposure when Cal/OSHA issues a citation for a willful violation.

It will have to review inspection reports involving serious violations and serious injuries, illnesses, or exposures affecting one to four employees, and promptly investigate where criminal violations may have occurred. And it will have to prepare prosecution cases and refer qualifying investigations unless it finds legally insufficient evidence of a criminal violation. The section will also require written case review procedures, documented reasons for declining to investigate or refer, and a routine or automated process for transmitting case information to the Bureau. 

Prosecutors are not new to this picture. Section 6409.2 already provides for notification when a serious workplace accident occurs. What AB 2321 adds, from January 1, 2027, is direct notification to the county district attorney by the responding police or fire agency, alongside notification to Cal/OSHA.

Cal/OSHA will then notify the Bureau and the district attorney or other appropriate prosecutor, regardless of how it learned of the accident. Notification is not a determination that anyone did anything wrong. It does mean a prosecutor may learn of the incident before the employer has finished understanding it. 

Section 6315.3 is also amended, but it governs the Bureau’s annual reporting to the Legislature and imposes no employer obligation. 

What counts as a serious injury, illness, or exposure

These are defined legal terms, not descriptions of how alarming an incident looks. 

A serious injury or illness means an injury or illness occurring in a place of employment or in connection with employment that requires inpatient hospitalization for other than medical observation or diagnostic testing, or in which an employee suffers an amputation, the loss of an eye, or any serious degree of permanent disfigurement.

It excludes an injury, illness, or death caused by an accident on a public street or highway unless the accident occurred in a construction zone. There is no 24 hour hospitalization threshold. Effective January 1, 2026, the statutory definition also includes silicosis and silica-related lung cancer. (Lab. Code, § 6302, subd. (h).) 

That addition is worth a pause. The regulation defining the same term, California Code of Regulations, title 8, section 330, subdivision (h), does not carry the silica language. An employer who checks the regulation rather than the statute will not find it. 

Silica cases also carry their own reporting rules, separate from the general incident reporting described later in this article. Under the general industry respirable crystalline silica standard, an employer must report a confirmed case of silicosis, or of lung cancer related to respirable crystalline silica exposure, to the California Department of Public Health and to Cal/OSHA within 24 hours of receiving the information, together with a detailed list of specified facts about the employee, the work performed, the exposure, and the protections in place. 

The scope of that standard is narrower than it first appears. It excludes construction work covered under section 1532.3, agricultural operations covered under section 3436, and exposures that result from the processing of sorptive clays, and it contains further exposure based limits along with a set of exceptions tied to high exposure trigger tasks. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 5204, subds. (a), (m).)

If respirable crystalline silica is present in your operations, do not work from this summary. Identify which silica standard applies to your work and read its scope provision. 

Serious exposure is a separate term. It means any exposure of an employee to a hazardous substance, whether from an incident, accident, emergency, or exposure over time, in a degree or amount sufficient to create a realistic possibility that death or serious physical harm in the future could result from the actual hazard created by the exposure. (Lab. Code, § 6302, subd. (i).) 

Could a supervisor or manager face criminal liability

Yes, and that was true before AB 2321. 

Labor Code section 6425 reaches any employer and any employee having direction, management, control, or custody of any employment, place of employment, or of any other employee. That is current law. AB 2321 expands what has to happen for the section to apply.

Today it reaches a willful violation that caused death or permanent or prolonged impairment of the body. From January 1, 2027 it will also reach one that caused serious injury or illness or serious exposure. (Lab. Code, § 6425, subd. (a).) 

The penalties are not changing, and they are not small. An individual faces up to one year in county jail or a fine up to $100,000, or both, or state prison for 16 months, two, or three years, or a fine up to $250,000, or both. A corporation or limited liability company faces a fine up to $1,500,000.

A conviction within seven years of certain prior convictions raises the corporate range to between $500,000 and $2,500,000, and a repeat conviction under subdivision (a) raises it to between $1,000,000 and $3,500,000. (Lab. Code, § 6425, subds. (a), (b), (c).) A prosecution under this section does not displace a prosecution for involuntary manslaughter. (Id., subd. (f); Pen. Code, § 192.) 

“Willfully” here does not mean an intent to injure anyone. The section adopts the Penal Code definition, which requires only a purpose or willingness to commit the act or make the omission, and which expressly does not require an intent to violate the law or to injure another. (Lab. Code, § 6425, subd. (e); Pen. Code, § 7.) That does not turn every error into a crime.

A mistake, standing alone, does not establish a violation of this section, and every element still has to be proved, including a willful violation of a covered safety requirement and the required causal connection to the harm. What the definition does mean is that the absence of any intent to hurt someone does not, by itself, resolve the question. 

This is not theoretical. In a published decision, People v. Luo (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 663, the Sixth Appellate District affirmed three convictions under section 6425, subdivision (a), for willfully violating an occupational safety order causing death, and confirmed that the section reaches supervisory employees and not only employers. 

More recently, in November 2022 the president of a Sun Valley construction company was convicted of a felony for violating Labor Code section 6425. The underlying incident occurred in 2016, when a laborer was lowered roughly 15 to 20 feet into a 50 foot drainage sump while standing on a metal bucket attached to a small crane, became unresponsive, fell to the bottom, and drowned.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney had filed a felony complaint charging involuntary manslaughter and two counts under section 6425, subdivision (a). The sentence included a $100,000 fine, one year of formal probation, and completion of OSHA training. (Cal. Dept. of Industrial Relations, News Release No. 2023-32 (Apr. 19, 2023).) 

An accident by itself still does not establish a crime. The statutory elements, including a willful violation of a covered requirement and causation, have to be proved. But that conviction came under today’s narrower version of the statute. AB 2321 widens a provision that is already in use. 

Separately, effective January 1, 2027, new section 6314, subdivision (f), will make it a misdemeanor to willfully resist, prevent, impede, or interfere with the chief or an authorized representative in performing duties under subdivisions (a) through (d), or to willfully violate a court order relating to those duties. It will be punishable by up to six months in county jail, a fine up to $5,000, or both. 

How a Cal/OSHA inspection connects to a criminal case

AB 2321 also amends Labor Code section 6322. That section protects a specific category of material rather than everything Cal/OSHA collects: information obtained by the Division in connection with an inspection or proceeding that contains or might reveal a trade secret, or that is confidential under California’s public records law.

From January 1, 2027, that protected information may be disclosed, among the other disclosures the section already permits, to law enforcement officers or prosecutors in any law enforcement investigation or prosecution. 

Put the pieces in order. The responding agency notifies the district attorney, Cal/OSHA notifies the Bureau and the prosecutor, Cal/OSHA inspects, and from 2027 what it gathers can reach that prosecutor even where the material would otherwise be protected. 

Two things this does not do. It does not make the information public. And it does not decide any privilege question. Whether the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine protects a particular document depends on how that document was created and who received it, which is a separate analysis and a question for counsel. 

The practical point is narrower and more useful than either. The connection between a Cal/OSHA inspection and a criminal case is not new, as the 2022 conviction shows. What changes in 2027 is that the path from the inspection file to the prosecutor becomes more direct. An employer that treats the inspection and the question of criminal exposure as two unrelated matters is working from the wrong map. 

Why a record marked “resolved” may leave important questions unanswered

Hypothetical example. An employee reports a damaged machine guard. A supervisor forwards the concern to maintenance, and the tracking entry is marked “addressed.” After an injury, no one can determine whether that meant maintenance received the message, inspected the equipment, or completed a repair. 

The missing detail does not establish that nothing was done. But the status label does not establish that the hazard was corrected either, and resolving the difference means comparing what the people involved say against maintenance records, messages, photographs, and whatever else exists. 

The gap between “someone was notified” and “the hazard was corrected” can matter a great deal when anyone later tries to reconstruct what the employer actually did. A useful record closes that gap. It says who acted, what changed, and how completion was checked. A status label does none of that. 

Five areas to review now

The injury and illness prevention program and incident reporting duties already exist, and so does the criminal exposure under section 6425. There is no reason to wait for January. Each item below is a way to test whether a duty is being met in practice rather than on paper. 

One structural decision comes before any of them. Decide in advance who will run the response and who will make the report, and where you have the people for it, make those two different roles. In a serious incident the two jobs compete, because the report runs on a clock and the response does not. In a smaller organization one person may have to carry both, and the answer there is a named backup who can pick up either job.

Nothing in California law requires two separate individuals. What the law requires is that the report be made on time. While you are at it, decide who owns evidence preservation, who speaks to Cal/OSHA, who coordinates with counsel, and who decides whether an internal fact-finding effort begins, what it is for, and who receives the result. The first hour is a poor time to answer any of that. 

1. Check implementation, not the document. California requires every employer to establish, implement, and maintain an effective injury and illness prevention program, including hazard identification, correction procedures, incident investigation procedures, and training. (Lab. Code, § 6401.7; Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3203.) Ask whether supervisors can say what they are expected to do when a hazard is reported. Check whether the training delivered matches the work assigned. A signed attendance sheet establishes attendance, not instruction.
2. Make sure concerns reach someone who can act. The program must include communication provisions designed to encourage employees to report hazards without fear of reprisal. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3203.) Trace how one concern moves from the employee who raised it to a person authorized to fix it, and name who owns follow up and escalation. Make sure the loop closes. A concern passed along without an owner can sit indefinitely while everyone assumes another department has it.
3. Plan for reporting when no one senior is available. The statute requires an immediate report of a work connected serious injury, illness, or death, and an employer who violates that requirement may be assessed a civil penalty of not less than $5,000. (Lab. Code, § 6409.1, subd. (b).) The regulation defines “immediately” as as soon as practically possible and no longer than eight hours after the employer knows, or with diligent inquiry would have known, with a narrow extension to no more than 24 hours after the incident where the employer can demonstrate exigent circumstances. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 342, subd. (a).) Neither period is a waiting period. Name a primary reporter and a backup, with the Cal/OSHA contact information in hand. Do not let a timely report depend on the CEO’s availability, an insurer’s response, or the completion of an internal review. These are the general rules; silica related cases carry the separate 24 hour duty described earlier, and other hazard specific reporting rules may also apply.
4. Preserve evidence while protecting people. Medical care and preventing further harm come first. After that, identify the video, photographs, equipment and maintenance records, training materials, earlier hazard reports, messages, and witnesses that matter, and stop routine deletion before it runs. Cal/OSHA may order preservation of physical materials or the accident site during an investigation, and a knowing violation of such an order is punishable by a fine of up to $5,000. (Lab. Code, § 6314, subd. (e).) That is a separate provision from the new misdemeanor in subdivision (f), and the two should not be confused. Where significant regulatory or potential criminal exposure exists, involve qualified counsel early on preservation, the scope of interviews, privilege, and communications with regulators.
5. Verify corrections and keep an honest record. Record what was corrected, when, and how completion was checked. An assigned task is not a completed correction. Preserve originals, and date any later reconstruction of earlier events as what it is rather than presenting it as a contemporaneous record. Local governmental entities are not required to keep records of the steps taken to implement and maintain the program, but that narrow exception does not relieve them of the obligation to have the program or of other recordkeeping duties. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3203, subd. (b)(2), Exception No. 4.)

My recommendation is to start with one recently closed hazard report and trace it from the original concern to the claimed correction. If someone unfamiliar with the matter cannot tell who acted, what changed, and how completion was verified, the problem is in the process, not in that one file. 

When an independent investigation helps, and when it does not

A serious incident raises two different kinds of questions. One set is technical: what failed, and why. The other is factual in the way an investigator means it. Was the hazard reported, and to whom? Who knew, and when? What was actually said? Did supervisors do what the program required? Do the records reflect what happened? Is there related misconduct? A technical analysis may touch on some of that, but on its own it will not resolve disputed questions about internal reports, supervisory conduct, the accuracy of documentation, or related allegations. 

An independent investigation is worth considering when material facts are disputed, when the people who would ordinarily oversee the review are themselves within the scope of the questions, or when the accuracy of the documentation is itself in issue. 

Two cautions. A workplace investigation is not a substitute for technical accident analysis, regulatory compliance, or legal advice, and it should not be scoped as though it were. And where a criminal referral is realistic, sequencing matters. Who directs the investigation, what it is for, and who receives the result are questions to settle with counsel before interviews begin rather than afterward. 

About California Labor Solutions

California Labor Solutions (CLS) is a California licensed private investigation firm. The firm holds California Private Investigator License No. 26311, and Shawn Larry, J.D., serves as its Qualified Manager. He is the firm’s Founder and Principal Investigator and has more than 20 years of experience in human resources and workplace investigations. CLS conducts independent workplace investigations involving sensitive allegations and disputed facts, guided by the AWI Guiding Principles for Conducting Workplace Investigations and applying the standard of proof appropriate to the assignment, which in most workplace investigations is a preponderance of the evidence. 

To discuss whether an independent workplace investigation fits your matter, contact California Labor Solutions at californialaborsolutions.com/contact. 

Disclaimer 

California Labor Solutions is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or legal representation. This article provides general information, not a complete statement of every applicable requirement. Obligations depend on the employer, the workplace, the incident, and the governing law, and the law may change. Consult qualified legal counsel about reporting duties, regulatory investigations, potential criminal exposure, and related decisions. 

Sources 

• Assembly Bill 2321, Chapter 936, Statutes of 2026 
• Senate Bill 20, Chapter 734, Statutes of 2025 (adding silicosis and silica-related lung cancer to the definition of serious injury or illness, effective January 1, 2026) 
• Labor Code § 6302 (definitions, including serious injury or illness and serious exposure) 
• Labor Code § 6304 (employer defined) 
• Labor Code § 3300 (employer; public entities) 
• Labor Code § 6314 (inspection authority; preservation orders; misdemeanor) 
• Labor Code § 6315 (Bureau of Investigations duties) 
• Labor Code § 6315.3 (Bureau annual report) 
• Labor Code § 6322 (confidential information; disclosure to law enforcement) 
• Labor Code § 6401.7 (injury and illness prevention program) 
• Labor Code § 6409.1 (employer reporting; civil penalty) 
• Labor Code § 6409.2 (first responder notification) 
• Labor Code § 6425 (criminal liability for willful violations) 
• Penal Code § 7 (definition of “willfully”) 
• Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 330 (definitions) 
• Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 342 (reporting work connected fatalities and serious injuries) 
• Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 3203 (injury and illness prevention program) 
• Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 5204 (respirable crystalline silica; reporting of confirmed cases) 
• Cal/OSHA Bureau of Investigations 
• Cal. Dept. of Industrial Relations, News Release No. 2023-32 (Apr. 19, 2023) 
• Cal/OSHA, reporting a work related serious injury, illness or death 
• People v. Luo (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 663, 224 Cal.Rptr.3d 526 The California Code of Regulations and Department of Industrial Relations pages listed above were accessed November 3, 2026. The Labor Code and Penal Code links are provided for the reader’s reference. Those pages display the law currently in effect, so until January 1, 2027 they will show the text as it reads before the AB 2321 amendments. For the amendments themselves, the chaptered bill is the source.