Federal agency decisions, searchable in plain English.
Workplace-safety cases from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) and mine-safety cases from the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (FMSHRC), each with a plain-English summary, the standards it cites, and whether it counts as precedent. More agencies are coming.
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D.T. Construction Company, Inc.
Three willful trench violations affirmed, most other items upheld, $119,750 penalty
D.T. Construction is a Pennsylvania contractor that installs underground water and sewer lines. After OSHA inspected several of its dig sites in 1998, the agency issued three citations covering willful, serious, and other-than-serious violations. The heart of the case was three willful cave-in…
Kaspar Wire Works, Inc.
Commission upholds most willful recordkeeping violations but vacates unsupported items
Kaspar Wire Works manufactured formed wire products at a Shiner, Texas facility with roughly 850 to 900 employees. After a 1990 inspection, OSHA cited more than 400 alleged violations and proposed $1,236,000 in penalties; the ALJ affirmed most items and assessed $257,700. The Commission found that…
Patterson Drilling Company, Inc.
Bloodborne-pathogen citations vacated for an oil-field drilling crew
Patterson Drilling Company ran a horizontal drilling rig at a site south of Gonzales, Texas. OSHA inspected after a February 1993 accident in which falling equipment caused a fatal crushing injury to a worker. The agency issued a serious citation with eight items and an "other" citation with two…
American Asbestos Control Co.
Asbestos-removal citations withdrawn
American Asbestos Control removed insulation from an aluminizing pot without a negative-pressure enclosure or a connected decontamination area. A nearby bulk sample contained 70 percent asbestos, although the contractor's air samples were well below the permissible exposure limit. The ALJ held that…
Petrolane Offshore Construction Service, Inc.
Maritime work citations affirmed under OSHA coverage
Petrolane performed offshore construction and ship repair work at a Louisiana site, including conversion of a barge and sandblasting a drilling-platform structure. OSHA issued seventeen nonserious citation items covering recordkeeping, cranes, abrasive blasting, compressed-gas cylinders, scaffolds…
What these documents are
- Commission decisions: Rulings by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission itself, the highest level of agency review. These are citable as Commission precedent, though a decision may have been appealed to a U.S. Court of Appeals after issuance.
- ALJ decisions: Rulings by OSHRC Administrative Law Judges after a hearing. When no Commissioner directs review, an ALJ decision becomes a final order under 29 U.S.C. § 661(j): it binds the parties in that case but is not binding precedent in other cases.
- Why finality matters: Every page here says which kind of decision you are reading, so you know whether it is precedent you can cite or a final order that only shows how one judge ruled on one set of facts.
- Where they come from: Every page links the official OSHRC public release, and the full text on the page is that release. The plain-English summaries are written by Ezel.