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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G.A. West & Co., Inc.
Pulp-machine lockout citation vacated for lack of close-contact proof
G.A. West was a resident contractor at an Alabama pulp mill where an employee was seriously injured near a pulp machine and later died. OSHA's citation addressed different employees who had installed electrical conduit beneath the operating machine several days earlier without locking it out. The…
Burkes Mechanical, Inc.
Conveyor lockout violations affirmed but willful item reduced to serious
Burkes Mechanical employees cleaned debris beneath a running fuel-wood conveyor at a paper mill, and one employee was killed when his arm and shovel became caught between an idler and the belt. The Commission held that both the general lockout/tagout standard and the paper-mill-specific lockout…
Mead Coated Board, Inc.
Serious paper-mill violation vacated under settlement
The Secretary and Mead Coated Board jointly asked the Commission to reopen its final order, vacate the portion affirming a serious paper-mill safety violation, and approve a settlement. The Commission had already stated that it would grant the requested relief if the Eleventh Circuit returned the…
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review, an ALJ decision becomes a final order under 29 U.S.C. § 661(j): it binds the parties in that case but is not binding precedent in other cases.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.