Can I be liable for a trades business's past workplace safety violations after I buy it?

It depends heavily on whether you're buying shares or assets. In a share sale, you're acquiring the corporation itself, including its history, so any outstanding penalties, orders, or ongoing proceedings tied to past safety violations generally travel with the corporation and can become your problem to resolve, even though you weren't the one running the business at the time. In an asset sale, the buyer is typically a new or separate legal entity, and past violations attributed to the seller's business generally stay with the selling entity, though unresolved compliance orders tied to the actual worksite or equipment can still affect the buyer practically.

Beyond direct liability, a history of safety violations is a signal worth taking seriously regardless of deal structure, since it often points to underlying practices — training gaps, equipment issues, supervision problems — that don't automatically fix themselves just because ownership changes, and that could expose a new owner to fresh violations if not addressed.

Reviewing the business's safety compliance history, any outstanding orders, and its relationship with the relevant safety regulator during due diligence, and negotiating indemnities for anything unresolved, is the practical way to manage this before closing.