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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Timberline Hardwood Floors LLC
Most violations affirmed with $166,265 in penalties
Timberline manufactured hardwood flooring with woodworking machinery at the same facility used by a predecessor company under the same manager. OSHA cited extensive deficiencies involving hearing conservation, hazard communication, exits, fire-extinguisher training, machine guarding, compressed…
American Recycling & Manufacturing Co., Inc.
Broad safety violations affirmed after amputation inspection
American Recycling & Manufacturing produced wood packaging materials and pallets at a Rochester, New York facility. OSHA opened a safety inspection after a twenty-year-old employee's left hand was amputated when a coworker accidentally activated a pop-up saw, then opened a related health inspection…
Peacock Timber Company, Inc.
Lockout, respirator, and noise items affirmed
Peacock Timber operated a seven-employee sawmill in Troy, Alabama. The judge affirmed a serious lockout/tagout item because employees serviced multi-energy-source mill equipment without documented machine-specific procedures. An other-than-serious respirator item was affirmed because employees…
Flintstone Millworks & Hardwood Co., Inc.
Repeat training violations affirmed
OSHA cited Flintstone Millworks after inspecting its Georgia millwork facility. At a simplified-proceedings hearing, the parties agreed to amend two alleged failure-to-abate violations to repeat violations. The first involved the company's lockout/tagout program, and the second involved forklift…
General Motors Corp., CPCG Oklahoma City Plant
Widespread lockout failures produced serious and willful violations
OSHA issued 57 lockout/tagout citation items after a millwright was killed when a motor rail conveyor activated during servicing work at General Motors' Oklahoma City plant. The Commission found that GM did not adequately implement or enforce its energy-control program, conduct the required annual…
Townsend Tree Services Corporation
Testing-area lockout violation affirmed
Townsend Tree Services employees changed blades and a belt on a remote tree trimmer, then energized the machine to test the replacement parts. The foreman moved within three feet of the rotating blades and died after the boom moved and the blades struck him. The judge held that the lockout/tagout…
Luna Tech, Inc.
Settlement approved with $50,000 in combined penalties
The two cases arose from OSHA inspections of Luna Tech's fireworks-manufacturing plant, including an inspection after explosions and fires injured three employees and one later died. While the cases were under Commission review, the parties settled all remaining issues. The Secretary withdrew…
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…
C-Post
Willful lockout and guarding citations cut to serious after a small fence-post maker's amputation injury
C-Post is a small Montana company that makes wooden fence posts and furniture legs from logs, employing about 10 people. After a worker's left hand was severed in a doweler machine, OSHA inspected and issued a long list of serious, willful, repeat, and other-than-serious citations covering…
Commercial Newspaper Service, and its successors
Admitted safety violations affirmed, penalties reduced to $460
Commercial Newspaper Service published athletic posters at a small Meridian, Idaho, facility. The company withdrew its contest to violations involving emergency exit lighting, flammable-liquid and combustible storage, lockout procedures, electrical equipment and wiring, and injury-recordkeeping…
Worldwide Manufacturing, Inc.
Commission affirms willful and repeat machine-guarding violations and raises the penalties
Worldwide Manufacturing runs a small factory in Berkeley, Missouri that makes collapsible sawhorses, folding tables, and metal legs. OSHA inspected in 1995, cited machine-guarding and lockout/tagout problems, and Worldwide settled by agreeing to fix them. A 1997 follow-up inspection found many of…
Aero Tec Laboratories, Inc.
Plant safety items largely affirmed with reduced penalties
Aero Tec manufactured fuel tanks and containment vessels at its New Jersey plant. The judge rejected its claim that OSHA had promised no penalties or exceeded the scope of consent because management accompanied the open inspection without objecting. The decision affirmed items involving an…
Murphy Enterprises, Inc., d/b/a Murphy Brothers Exposition
Failed Giant Wheel rope and missing sling inspections yield $10,000
Murphy Brothers Exposition was setting up a 90-foot carnival Ferris wheel in Dallas when a damaged wire rope failed, causing moving wheel components to kill two employees and seriously injure a third employee, whose leg was partially amputated. Administrative Law Judge Stanley M. Schwartz found…
Pit-Stop, Inc. (Uniroyal Pitstop)
Unguarded service pit affirmed as a serious violation, $100
Pit-Stop, Inc., operating as Uniroyal Pitstop in Midwest City, Oklahoma, ran an automotive shop where workers used floor pits about 3 feet wide, 5 feet deep, and 10 feet long to reach the underside of vehicles for oil changes and grease jobs. OSHA cited the shop after an inspection found several of…
Cisneros Packing Co., Inc.
$2,550 assessed for stair, exit, lockout, and posting violations
Cisneros Packing processed pork skins at a Texas plant and contested only the proposed penalties, not the underlying violations. The remaining penalized conditions involved a nonconforming kettle stairway, a boarded and obstructed exit, cleaning an energized slicer without a lockout program, and…
Westvaco Corporation
Printer-slotter lockout violation affirmed
Westvaco employees adjusted the cutting and slotting heads of a paperboard printer-slotter between customer orders without locking out the machine. The Commission held that the adjustments were “setting up” performed before normal production operations, so they did not qualify for the exception for…
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.