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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Film Allman, LLC
Willful train-trestle hazard citation affirmed
Film Allman directed twenty to twenty-three employees to film a movie scene on an active railroad trestle. The company knew the railroad had twice denied permission, had no railroad representative controlling train traffic, and did not create a workable emergency exit plan. When a train approached…
Basic Energy Services
Well-rig stair and guardrail violations affirmed
Basic Energy Services provided well-servicing work at an oil and gas well near Hawkins, Texas. OSHA observed employees working on an elevated rig platform where stairs between platform levels were broken and replaced with a box, and a roughly six-foot section of guardrail was missing. The judge…
Longhorn Service Company
Mixed ruling on well-rig fall and fire hazards
Longhorn Service Company operated a well-servicing rig near Alexander, North Dakota. The judge affirmed serious items involving an unguarded hole in the rig floor, an inadequately guarded open platform, and improperly maintained and inspected fire extinguishers. A repeat stair-railing item was also…
4 State Trucks
Order-picker fall and retraining violations affirmed
4 State Trucks used powered order pickers to retrieve parts from warehouse shelves as high as 23 feet. An employee who was not tied off fell about 15 feet from an elevated order picker and later died from his injuries. The judge held that the order picker's work pad was a platform covered by the…
Big Sky Well Service
Grinder use near crude-oil vapors led to $10,150 in penalties
Big Sky Well Service sent two employees to remove and replace a leaking crude-oil storage tank at an Ohio well site. A supervisor used an electric grinder to cut a notch in the tank while another employee worked on top, and the tank exploded, throwing that employee into nearby woods and causing a…
Dierzen-Kewanee Heavy Industries, LTD
Unabated hazards resulted in $133,100 in penalties
Dierzen-Kewanee manufactured dump-truck bodies at a former boiler factory in Illinois. After settling earlier OSHA citations, the company paid only the first penalty installment, did not provide requested abatement information, and left many cited conditions uncorrected for a follow-up inspection…
J.C. Watson Company
Onion packing operations were subject to general-industry standards
J.C. Watson Company grew onions and operated an Idaho facility that cleaned, sorted, graded, packaged, and prepared them for shipment. After an employee's arm was caught under a moving conveyor, OSHA cited the company under numerous general-industry standards. Watson argued that its packing work…
St. Lawrence Food Corp., dba Primo Foods
Most dairy-plant health and safety citations affirmed
OSHA conducted health and safety inspections at Primo Foods, a kosher dairy, and cited hazards involving ammonia refrigeration, respirators, confined spaces, chemical training, noise, machine guarding, electrical work, lockout/tagout, powered industrial trucks, and recordkeeping. The ALJ found that…
Federal Express Corporation
Platform railing citation vacated for lack of exposure proof
FedEx used an elevating platform to move cargo containers between trucks at its Oklahoma City air cargo facility. The platform had open sides, and OSHA measured it at 51 inches above the concrete while one truck was being loaded. Although the judge found that the railing standard applied and that…
Lewis County Dairy Corp.
Widespread safety violations result in $72,750 penalty
OSHA found extensive safety deficiencies at Lewis County Dairy's kosher dairy plant, including missing safety programs, inadequate lockout practices, unguarded equipment, electrical hazards, deficient fall protection, and insufficient hazard communication. Of the 33 serious citation items, the…
Gate Concrete Products Co.
Gantry crane guarding items partly vacated
Gate Concrete Products manufactured precast concrete products and used gantry cranes to move them around its Jacksonville plant. An employee lost two fingers after reaching through a missing engine-compartment door while a maintenance supervisor tried to start a stalled crane. The judge vacated the…
ConAgra Beef Company
Platform fall-protection citation vacated
ConAgra Beef Company used mechanized platforms to split suspended beef carcasses at its Cactus, Texas plant. OSHA alleged that employees on three platforms lacked fall protection, and two compliance officers testified that they saw one employee working without using the provided tether. The judge…
Coastal Paving, Inc.
Twenty-three items affirmed after contest withdrawal
OSHA issued Coastal Paving three citations containing 23 serious, willful, and other-than-serious items against its asphalt manufacturing operation. Before the hearing, Coastal withdrew its contest and stated that it was no longer in business, had no employees, and could not refute the Secretary's…
A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co.
Asbestos, HazCom, and combustible-dust electrical violations largely affirmed, many as willful
A.E. Staley Manufacturing runs a large grain wet-milling plant in Decatur, Illinois. A lengthy OSHA inspection begun in July 1990 produced two sets of citations, consolidated here as Docket Nos. 91-0637 and 91-0638. In the first docket, the Commission affirmed as willful the asbestos items for…
Key Energy Services, Inc., and its successors
Vacuum-truck venting hazard affirmed, three other items vacated
Key Energy Services was servicing an oil well at the Garcia Lease when a vacuum-truck cargo tank exploded and a worker was fatally struck by flying parts. The judge found that Key should have recognized the fire and explosion hazard created by venting flammable crude-oil vapors beneath the truck…
Future Home Technology, Inc.
Modular-home platform fall-protection violations affirmed
Future Home Technology manufactures modular housing in Port Jervis, New York. After inspections in early 1999, OSHA issued the company a nine-item serious citation and a one-item "other" citation. The company settled all but one item through a partial settlement. The remaining contested item…
Donrey Outdoor Advertising Co.
Billboard fall-protection violation affirmed
Donrey Outdoor Advertising sent a four-person crew to replace the vinyl face on a billboard beside an interstate in Little Rock, Arkansas. Two employees worked on an unguarded platform 70 feet above the ground without attaching their harness lanyards to the installed safety line, and they tied off…
Patterson Drilling Co. Rig #4
Rig-floor guarding and emergency washing violations affirmed
OSHA cited Patterson Drilling for inadequate guarding at a rig-floor opening and inadequate emergency washing facilities where employees handled caustic soda. The opening was protected only by a sagging chain without a midrail, exposing employees to a 20-foot fall. Judge James H. Barkley found that…
Turnbull Metal Products, Inc.
Press and facility violations produce $9,450 penalty
Turnbull Metal Products manufactured metal furniture and other products at a Mississippi facility using press brakes and mechanical power presses. OSHA cited missing platform and stair midrails, an inadequate lockout program, unguarded machine parts, deficient press inspections, and electrical…
CMH Material Handling, LLC
Elevated-platform fall violations affirmed
A CMH Material Handling employee died after falling from a 40-foot platform while replacing bolts on an overhead crane system at an aircraft manufacturing facility. The platform lacked standard guardrails in work areas, and employees did not consistently use the body harnesses CMH supplied. Judge…
L & B Products, Corp.
Fifty manufacturing safety items affirmed
L & B Products, Corp. manufactured furniture at a facility in Hudson, New York. OSHA issued 51 serious and other-than-serious items after inspecting eight departments. The allegations covered elevated work areas, exit signs, flammable liquids, fire and lockout training, machine and power-press…
Ohio Cellular Products Corp.
Machine-guarding citation affirmed after fatal rotating-arm accident
Ohio Cellular Products Corp. molds polyethylene foam sports and automotive padding at a plant in Wauseon, Ohio, using large rotating "Rotocast" ovens. In October 1996 a relief operator was fatally injured when her clothing caught on an oven's rotating mold arm while she unloaded foam. OSHA cited…
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…
American Airlines, Inc.
FAA ground-operations manual does not preempt OSHA guardrail and hazard-communication citations after a fatal fall
American Airlines ran an aircraft maintenance and repair facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a worker fell from the third story of a roughly 27-foot mobile "tail stand" work platform through unguarded floor openings to the ground and died, OSHA inspected and issued citations across two dockets…
Dawson Welltech, L.C. Rig #387
Commission approves an oil-rig settlement, with one stair-guardrail item tied to a pending Fifth Circuit case
Dawson Welltech operated a workover oil rig (Rig #387) at a well site near Lamar, Texas. After a 1993 OSHA inspection, the company was cited for guardrail, sanitation, bloodborne-pathogen, hazard-communication, and ladder items across two citations. Administrative Law Judge Louis G. LaVecchia…
Well-Tech, Inc.
Removed platform guardrail and missing site records produced $2,850 in penalties
Well-Tech, Inc. was a well-servicing contractor replugging and sampling wells at a chemical plant in Barberton, Ohio. Employees removed an eight-foot section of guardrail from a 16-foot-high drilling platform and placed caution tape across the opening; within about 15 minutes, an employee fell…
ConAgra, Inc.
Joint motion ends Commission review
OSHA cited ConAgra after an employee at a Buffalo grain elevator was seriously injured when a rail-car puller's wire cable snapped. The underlying judge affirmed a general-duty-clause violation as serious, affirmed stair and platform guarding violations, and vacated a lockout…
EBAA Iron, Inc.
Silica overexposure and control citations vacated
EBAA Iron operated a foundry in Cordele, Georgia, where OSHA sampled the breathing zone of an inner-diameter grinder operator and calculated exposure above the limit for respirable crystalline silica. EBAA showed that the grinding wheel contained 40 percent zirconium oxide and that OSHA's own…
Computer Sciences Raytheon
Two launch-platform items vacated, ramp item affirmed
Computer Sciences Raytheon employees opened camera boxes on Kennedy Space Center's mobile launch platform after space shuttle launches. The judge found that workers approached unguarded blast holes and perimeter edges before tying off, but she vacated those two items under the multi-employer…
Bionetics Corp.
Three launch-platform fall items affirmed, $2,750 assessed
Bionetics employees retrieved film from camera boxes on a mobile launch platform at Kennedy Space Center after space shuttle launches. During two launches, blast-hole and perimeter guardrails had been removed, the deck was wet and windy, and employees approached cameras within a few feet of…
Armco Steel Co., L.P.
Crane-runway and cylinder citations vacated
Armco Steel operated a steel-manufacturing facility in Middletown, Ohio. OSHA cited an unguarded crane runway 34 feet above the floor under the open-sided-platform standard, alternatively alleged that employees needed safety belts and lanyards, and cited an unsecured acetylene cylinder under the…
Armco Steel Company, L.P.
Platform and runway items affirmed, switch item vacated
Armco Steel operated a steel-manufacturing plant in Middletown, Ohio. The judge affirmed a serious violation for an unguarded seven-foot-high pulpit area where operators regularly retrieved supplies, finding that the area functioned as a covered work platform, and assessed $700. He also affirmed a…
Action Craft, Inc.
Penalties reduced for eight manufacturing violations
Action Craft manufactured small fishing boats with about 18 employees at a facility in Cape Coral, Florida. OSHA cited eight serious conditions involving storage-area load limits and railings, dispensing flammable liquids, a modified forklift, and guarding on a cylinder machine, bandsaw, and bench…
Waste Processing Equipment, Inc.
Eleven of twelve serious items affirmed, one vacated, penalty cut to $4,600
Waste Processing Equipment, Inc. runs a manufacturing plant in Rainsville, Alabama, with about 28 employees making paper balers and other waste-handling equipment. A September 1991 OSHA inspection led to a serious citation with 12 items and a proposed penalty of $12,500, plus an "other" citation…
Conagra Flour Milling Co. & Its Successors
Flour-mill electrical and blowdown violations affirmed
Conagra operated a seven-story flour mill in Sherman, Texas, where combustible grain dust made the milling floors Class II, Division 2 hazardous locations. The Commission affirmed serious violations for using a grain tester and pedestal fan with exposed motor components that did not meet the…
Well Solutions, Inc.
Open-fields evidence reinstates rig-safety violations
An OSHA inspector first visited Well Solutions' oil-well rig without a warrant and observed unguarded platforms and employees without hard hats from an accessible road and field. The judge suppressed those observations and vacated the citations. The Commission held that the open-fields doctrine…
Cardinal Industries, Inc.
One modular-plant fall item affirmed for $450
Cardinal manufactured modular housing units on an indoor assembly line. After a fatal fall from a unit roof, OSHA cited fall hazards on the roofs, an adjacent felt-rack platform, and a scissors lift. The Sixth Circuit first held that the plant was governed by general industry rather than…
Harrison Furniture Manufacturing Company
Commission approves withdrawal of all citations
OSHA cited Harrison Furniture Manufacturing Company for numerous conditions at its Arkansas furniture plant after an inspection conducted under a warrant. The earlier litigation addressed whether evidence from a plant-wide inspection should be suppressed when the warrant application was based on…
Cardinal Industries, Inc.
General-industry fall items vacated as preempted
Cardinal built modular housing units on an indoor assembly line using carpentry, plumbing, roofing, and electrical work. OSHA cited two unguarded platforms under the general-industry guardrail standard and the lack of safety belts under the general-industry personal-protective-equipment standard…
Curt Bullock Builders, Inc.
Mixed guarding and grounding rulings left in place
Curt Bullock manufactured prefabricated garages and was cited over an unguarded storage surface, an unguarded conveyor chain and sprocket, circular saws with lower guards wired back, and ungrounded employee-owned equipment. The judge treated the storage-surface item as de minimis and the…
Clement Food Company
Stacking, pulley, and platform items affirmed; forklift and fan items vacated
Clement Food bottled food products at an Oklahoma City plant and contested several storage, forklift, machine, electrical, and fall-protection items. The Commission affirmed a citation for a leaning 15-foot stack of boxes and a serious pulley-guarding violation, reducing the pulley penalty to $70…
Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
Platform citation remanded for de minimis findings
An administrative law judge had vacated a citation alleging that Anheuser-Busch violated the platform-guarding standard at 29 C.F.R. § 1910.23(c)(1). The Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that the cited surfaces were platforms under the regulatory definition and ordering that the citation be…
Consolidated Rail Corporation
Guarding items vacated and first-aid item affirmed
OSHA cited Conrail's Ohio diesel repair shop for an unguarded drop-table opening, incomplete safety chains on locomotive work ramps, and lack of trained first-aid personnel when no hospital was nearby. The Commission held that a Federal Railroad Administration policy statement exercised authority…
Consolidated Rail Corporation
Guarding items vacated and safety-shoe items affirmed
OSHA cited Conrail's locomotive repair shops in Enola and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for unguarded repair pits and work platforms and for not requiring steel-toed safety shoes. The Commission vacated the guarding items because a Federal Railroad Administration policy statement displaced OSHA…
Globe Industries, Inc.
Conveyor guardrail citation vacated
Globe employees climbed onto two elevated conveyor belts about once a week to clean guide rollers while production was shut down and locked out. OSHA cited the company for failing to install guardrails along the open sides, treating the conveyor tops as platforms under 29 C.F.R. § 1910.23(c)(1)…
General Electric Company
Turbine-shell guardrail items vacated
Employees sat on narrow joints of cast turbine-shell halves more than seven feet above the floor while drilling and grinding. OSHA cited General Electric for failing to install platform guardrails. The Commission held that an eighteen-to-twenty-four-inch ledge on a manufactured turbine shell was…
St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co.
Locomotive-pit guardrail violation affirmed
St. Louis-San Francisco Railway was cited for open-sided platforms beside locomotive inspection pits that lacked required railings. The company argued that a Federal Railroad Administration policy displaced OSHA authority and that guardrails would create greater hazards during locomotive…
Special Metals Corporation
Remote grating did not establish employee access
An unguarded metal grating was located 30 feet above a shipping area and could be reached only by climbing a ladder. The grating was not used in normal work or maintenance, and no employee had occasion to use it during the prior year. The Commission held that working below the grating did not…
Fleetwood Homes of Texas, Inc.
Movable assembly spanners classified as scaffolds
Fleetwood employees used aluminum spanners between mobile-home assembly decks to work on the ends of homes. The unguarded spanners were about four feet two inches and seven feet above the floor and were removed and repositioned every two hours as homes advanced through production. The Commission…
O.E.C. Corporation
Three violations affirmed without warrant review
An OSHA inspection conducted under a warrant produced three nonserious citations against O.E.C. Corporation. The judge affirmed the violations and assessed penalties of $100 and $175 for two items, while concluding that the Commission lacked authority to evaluate the warrant. Review was directed on…
Prowler Travel Trailers of New York, Inc.
Portable-platform guardrail citation vacated
Prowler employees finished travel trailers while standing on portable eight-foot spanners placed between two permanent catwalks. The spanners were 53 inches above the floor and lacked guardrails, so OSHA cited the general rule for open-sided platforms four feet or more above the floor. Commissioner…
Simmons, Inc.
Compressed-air and elevated-work violations affirmed
Simmons employees regularly removed reduction nozzles and used compressed air above 30 p.s.i. to clean cotton from machinery. The Commission rejected the company's arguments that this was unknown misconduct or production work outside the cleaning rule, and it treated the condition as a separate…
Meilman Food Industries
Meat-trimming platform guardrail violation affirmed
Meilman employees cleaned and trimmed cattle carcasses from three elevated work platforms whose carcass-facing sides had toeboards but no standard railings. The company argued that rails would interfere with meat-processing sanitation and increase cutting hazards. The Commission held that existing…
General Electric Company, Inc.
Commission affirms two violations and vacates two others
OSHA cited General Electric after inspecting its Schenectady, New York, worksite. The Commission vacated a machine-guarding citation because guards and a spacer protected the radiac cutoff machine's point of operation, and it also left an electrical citation vacated. It affirmed a general duty…
General Electric Company
Unguarded paint-room pit violated open-pit standard
General Electric used a long, five-foot-deep pit to paint the undersides of railroad cars at its Erie facility. After a car left the room, painters routinely cleaned debris from a floor surrounding the unguarded pit and worked within two to three feet of its edge. The Commission held that…
S. E. Smith & Sons
Saw-guard violations affirmed with a reduced penalty
S. E. Smith & Sons contested five nonserious items and five serious machine-guarding items involving table and radial saws. The employer argued that each saw operator should decide whether to use the required safety devices. The judge rejected that position because compliance with the standards…
Weyerhaeuser Company
Sawmill citations largely reinstated
After two inspections of Weyerhaeuser’s Oregon lumber complex, the judge vacated most contested items. The Commission largely reversed. It affirmed excessive-noise subitems where even machinery-idling readings exceeded permissible levels for the employees’ work periods, while vacating subitems that…
Edward Hines Lumber Co.
Mixed sawmill citations resolved with $510 penalty
OSHA cited Edward Hines Lumber after inspecting its large Oregon sawmill complex, alleging numerous machine-guarding, conveyor, walkway, ladder, and power-transmission violations. The judge vacated many items because the cited standards were advisory or inapplicable, the machinery was guarded by…
Arvin Millwork Co.
No penalty assessed for alleged failure to abate
An earlier uncontested citation alleged that Arvin Millwork failed to guard a platform 30 feet above ground. OSHA later alleged that the company had failed to abate that condition and challenged several evidentiary rulings by the judge. During Commission review, however, OSHA expressly stated that…
Allis-Chalmers Corporation
Transformer-top guardrail item vacated
Allis-Chalmers employees performed assembly and testing work while standing on the tops of power transformers that were 10 to 14 feet high. OSHA cited the company for failing to install standard railings on those surfaces. The Commission majority concluded that the surface of a product being…
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.