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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.

5,577 decisions and counting · Latest decision July 17, 2026
5 decisions 29 C.F.R. § 1910.120(q)(1)

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ALJ

North Atlantic Fish Company, Inc.

Broad fish-plant safety violations affirmed

OSHA's safety and health inspections of North Atlantic's Massachusetts fish-processing plant identified extensive fire, machine, electrical, chemical, respiratory, noise, storage, and powered-industrial-truck hazards. The judge affirmed most of the serious items, including general duty violations…

July 9, 2001 ·Michael H. Schoenfeld
Mixed result
ALJ

M & D Power Constructors, Inc.

Willful arsenic violations affirmed

M&D performed maintenance and demolition work during an outage at an Alabama coal-fired power plant, where fly ash in air heaters and an old precipitator contained inorganic arsenic. Judge Ken S. Welsch found that the air heaters remained regulated areas until representative monitoring showed…

May 21, 1999 ·Ken S. Welsch
Citations affirmed
ALJ

Mallard Bay Drilling, Inc., LLC

OSHA jurisdiction upheld over emergency response on drilling barge

A natural-gas explosion on Mallard Bay Drilling's stationary drilling barge killed and seriously injured employees and destroyed the rig. OSHA cited delayed evacuation, the lack of an emergency response plan, and inadequate emergency-response training. The company argued that Coast Guard authority…

December 28, 1998 ·Ken S. Welsch
Citations affirmed
COMM

Yellow Freight Systems, Inc.

DOT rules did not preempt OSHA spill protections

OSHA cited Yellow Freight after hazardous-material spills at its Colorado freight terminal. The Commission held that the governing transportation statute expressly prevented Department of Transportation actions from preempting OSHA enforcement for the cited working conditions. It remanded the…

July 31, 1996
Mixed result
ALJ

Jaxon Industrial Services, Inc.

EAJA fee request denied

Jaxon Industrial Services was cleaning a nonhazardous black-liquor spill at a Jacksonville paper mill when OSHA cited it for lacking an emergency response plan. The original hazardous-waste emergency-response allegation was dismissed, and the alternative emergency-action-plan citation was later…

February 13, 1995 ·Paul L. Brady
Procedural

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.