Litigation

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has again upheld an OSHA workplace violence citation that designated a healthcare facility and its management firm as a “single employer” for purposes of OSH Act enforcement, just as a federal appeals court is weighing its use of that test in a prior case targeting the same management company.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has issued a pair of decisions that affirm OSHA’s approach to identifying heat dangers, scrapping an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) rulings that held its long-standing approach failed to show hazard to workers, but the panel is also setting a high bar for “feasible” abatement methods.

South Carolina is pointing to OSHA’s latest inflation adjustment to enforcement penalties as fresh justification for its ongoing court challenge to the mandate for states to match those increases each year, saying the rulemaking repeats that directive and is ripe for judicial review.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) affirmed OSHA’s citation against Walmart for a violation of its safety standard for items stored “in tiers,” after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned an earlier decision where the panel applied a narrower reading of the rule to say it did not apply to the retailer’s facility.

Unions, Democratic-led states and pro-regulatory groups are lining up against a contracting firm’s lawsuit claiming OSHA’s authority to craft and enforce safety standards is unconstitutional, calling the company’s claims untethered from the law and warning that granting its request would “hobble” workplace safeguards nationwide.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit is backing OSHA’s narrow reading of a little-used provision in the OSH Act allowing workers to sue the agency when it fails to address an “imminent danger” of workplace harm, agreeing that such suits face the same six-month statute of limitations as federal enforcement action under the law.

Oregon logging and forestry groups will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to let them challenge the state’s workplace safety rules in federal court on the theory that state plans are effectively agents of OSHA rather than their own state governments -- an approach that would open the door to bifurcated litigation on a host of issues.

Industry attorneys say an Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) case where the panel underlined the “creating employer” test for liability at multi-employer worksites could also showcase the limits of that doctrine for OSHA enforcement, especially the need to prove that the company had knowledge of the danger it allegedly created.

OSHA is urging a federal appeals court to reject an employer’s arguments that the OSH Act’s safety standard program is unconstitutional under the “non-delegation” doctrine, arguing that both the law itself and Supreme Court precedent establish well-defined limits on that authority.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is underscoring the importance of the “creating employer” doctrine for identifying liability for safety violations at multi-employer worksites, as the panel remanded for new proceedings a case where an administrative law judge (ALJ) rejected an OSHA crane-safety violation under separate test for identifying “controlling” employers at such sites.