The Hunt-class stability problem in context

What would have happened to the people responsible if unstable Hunt-class escorts had gone on patrol and capsized before the fault was discovered?

The premise overstates the defect: the ships would have been extremely unpleasant and ineffective fighting platforms, but their instability was not severe enough to make them capsize in that way.

An uncorrected Hunt-class escort would have been unpleasant to serve in and almost unable to use its weapons effectively, but the stability defect was not severe enough to produce the imagined losses through capsizing. The design combined a hull derived from sloop practice with the armament and personnel arrangements of an escort destroyer, without torpedoes. Britain was already approaching wartime conditions, while many American designs had been developed with more time in peacetime. Senior British designers lacked time to supervise the project closely and delegated it to a relatively junior, inexperienced team. Finding and correcting the fault before operational service provides grounds for a favourable assessment of the trials process despite the original design error.