A Georgia construction company will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to review a case where an administrative law judge (ALJ) upheld an OSHA citation for fall-protection violations by a subcontractor under the firm’s control, based on a finding that it exercised “no care” as the controlling employer at its job site.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has upheld OSHA’s enforcement citation for a 2016 accident where a crane being prepared for dismantling touched a live power line, rejecting the employer’s argument that safety standards for crane “disassembly” do not apply to preparatory steps leading up to taking the machine apart.
OSHA has sent a final rule expected to re-establish Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates to the Federal Register for publication, appearing to cut off long-stayed litigation over the Trump administration’s rollback of those requirements while setting the stage for a potential court challenge from employers.
President Joe Biden has nominated former Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) member Amanda Wood Laihow to return to the board, months after she quietly stepped down in April at the conclusion of her first term -- leaving OSHRC with just a single Senate-confirmed member, short of the two-person quorum it needs to do business.
South Carolina is defending its latest challenge to OSHA’s mandate for states to match annual increases to federal minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties, arguing courts should not force it to “bet the farm” by provoking an enforcement action before suing over the policy, and that time spent on a prior case should not count against the statute of limitations.
A federal appeals court has rejected an Ohio construction company’s claims that OSHA unfairly cited it for safety and training violations after a 2018 incident where a crane arm fell and struck a worker, holding that the agency’s allegations were supported by “substantial evidence” and that the employer had “fair notice” of the claims against it.
A federal district court has approved a consent decree in a quiet, years-long trademark dispute between OSHA and an Illinois training and consulting company called “Global Occupational Health and Safety Academy,” or Global OSHA -- barring the firm from using what the agency alleged is a deceptively similar name to its own.
OSHA is asking a federal district court to dismiss South Carolina’s latest challenge to the agency’s yet-unenforced requirement for states to raise their maximum penalties for workplace health and safety violations to match federal levels, saying the case was filed too late and fails to show any harm from the policy, among other flaws.
Public-health groups are renewing litigation seeking to revive OSHA’s Obama-era electronic reporting rule even as a final rule expected to reinstate many or all of its requirements is awaiting White House approval, arguing that a federal court should scrap the 2018 rollback of those mandates immediately as their absence is causing ongoing harm.
OSHA is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to uphold a trench-safety citation over violations that a Texas contracting firm claims were the result of “unpreventable employee misconduct,” arguing that the employer has failed to show it uses effective safety monitoring or enforcement and thus should be barred from invoking that defense.