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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Manganas Painting Co., Inc.
Lead and fall-protection items partly affirmed
Manganas removed lead-based paint from two bridges using abrasive blasting inside canvas containments. OSHA cited the company for lead monitoring, shower, and medical-surveillance violations, as well as numerous fall-protection hazards. The Commission upheld the inspection warrant and found that…
A. J. McNulty & Company, Inc.
Mixed ruling on fall protection during precast concrete erection
A. J. McNulty & Company was erecting a precast concrete parking garage in White Plains, New York, when OSHA cited numerous fall-protection and other safety violations. The Commission rejected McNulty's request to exclude inspection evidence, finding that OSHA substantially honored the company's…
Milo Construction Corporation
Twelve violations affirmed with reduced classifications
Milo Construction Corporation was the prime contractor on a residential construction project in Guam. After Milo failed to comply with discovery orders, the judge deemed admitted the cited conditions, employee exposure, and Milo's ability to control or correct the hazards. The violations covered…
Superior Custom Cabinet Company, Inc.
Cabinet-delivery fall citations affirmed
Superior Custom Cabinet Company delivered cabinets to houses under construction. A delivery worker carrying a cabinet upstairs stepped backward from an unguarded second-floor landing and died after the fall. The Commission found Superior's general instruction to avoid unsafe conditions too vague…
Meridian Contractors, Inc.
Dismissals reversed and citation cases remanded
OSHA issued Meridian Contractors serious and willful construction citations with proposed penalties after two inspections. The ALJ dismissed both cases under Commission precedent treating the actions as moot because Meridian had stopped employing workers and was preparing to dissolve. After that…
Superior Electric Company
Repeated guardrail violation affirmed
Superior Electric employees used an unguarded catwalk about 10 feet above the floor while completing electrical work in a renovated warehouse. An employee fell while stepping from the catwalk onto a ladder and was injured. The Commission reversed the judge's ruling that Superior lacked knowledge…
Keith Rasmussen & Sons Construction
Scaffold and fall-protection citations mostly upheld, but penalties cut sharply for a four-worker employer
Keith Rasmussen & Sons Construction, a four-worker builder in Ouray, Colorado, was inspected by OSHA in April 1994 at a jobsite on Main Street. OSHA issued five citation items covering scaffold access, scaffold footing, guardrails, an unguarded second-floor edge, and the lack of a written safety…
Armstrong Steel Erectors, Inc.
Commission affirms four fall and impalement violations on bridge project
Armstrong Steel Erectors, Inc. was widening and rehabilitating an Interstate 70 bridge in Ohio. The Commission affirmed four serious violations involving unguarded planks used as runways between girders, unguarded painters' picks used as scaffolds, unguarded concrete pier tops used as work…
RGM Construction Company
Four bridge-safety items affirmed and two vacated
RGM Construction Company was widening a Texas bridge when OSHA cited fall-protection and water-safety conditions. The Commission affirmed a serious fall-protection item because tying a lanyard to an unsecured work platform could pull the platform down with a falling employee. It also affirmed items…
Zenith Tech, Inc.
Bridge-opening fall citation vacated
Zenith Tech performed bridge-demolition work on a Milwaukee freeway project. OSHA alleged that employees cutting rebar, attaching lifting chains, and cleaning the deck came too close to an unguarded opening about 15 feet above the ground. The compliance officer estimated distances from about half a…
Clarence Wall and Ceiling, Inc.
Tool and platform violations affirmed, $2,475 assessed
Clarence Wall and Ceiling was erecting metal roof framing at a New York construction site when OSHA found an angle grinder without its designed guard, an excessively worn grinding wheel, and an aerial work platform without a building-side guardrail. The judge affirmed the grinder-guard item because…
Centex-Rooney Construction Co.
Repeated fall-protection violations affirmed with $25,000 in penalties
Centex-Rooney was the general contractor for construction of two-story hotel buildings at a Florida resort. OSHA cited one defective ground-fault circuit interrupter, uncovered pipe-chase openings, and inadequate perimeter guardrails. The Commission vacated the electrical item because regular…
E.R. Del Moral, Inc.
Scaffold and fall-hazard violations affirmed
E.R. Del Moral was performing construction work in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The judge found that employees worked on elevated scaffolds and platforms with missing end guardrails and inadequate intermediate rails, and that safety belts did not substitute for the guardrails required by the cited…
Complete General Construction Co.
Commission approves bridge-safety settlement
Complete General Construction was performing construction work on a bridge over the Black Fork of the Mohican River near Lucas, Ohio. OSHA cited the company for failing to provide life jackets, ring buoys, a lifesaving skiff, edge guardrails, and protection from protruding reinforcing steel. The…
Bielmeier Builders, Inc.
Commission approves a settlement, dropping the electrical item and cutting the guardrail item to other-than-serious
Bielmeier Builders was a custom home builder putting up a two-story house in Clarence, New York. After an April 1991 inspection, OSHA cited the company for two serious violations: running a saw off an extension cord in a damp garage area with no ground-fault protection, and leaving an open-sided…
Caribco International Corporation
Scaffold and safety-program violations affirmed
Caribco International was working at a fitness-facility construction site at Fort Buchanan in San Juan, Puerto Rico. OSHA cited missing scaffold guardrails, an unguarded open-sided floor, inadequate scaffold bracing, and failures to maintain an accident-prevention program and train employees to…
Monitor Construction Company
Commission upholds formwork fall citations at $1,260
Monitor Construction erected concrete formwork for a parking garage at a Cincinnati shopping mall. OSHA cited 16-inch-wide, 30-inch-deep beam troughs that were not covered or guarded and an open deck edge nearly 10 feet above the ground. The Commission held that the troughs qualified as floor…
Southern Forming, Inc.
Broad safety violations affirmed at $69,150
Southern Forming, also known as Suncrete Construction, performed concrete formwork at construction sites in Sunny Isles and Delray Beach, Florida. At the Sunny Isles site, an employee fell to his death from a stairway, and OSHA's investigation identified numerous fall-protection, stairway…
Seifert Construction Co., Inc.
Floor-opening citation reduced to other-than-serious
Seifert Construction conceded that floor depressions at its worksite violated the cited floor-opening standard. The only remaining dispute was whether the violation was serious. The stipulated facts described depressions about eight inches deep, some containing four five-inch bolts, and competing…
J.A. Jones Construction Co.
Commission affirms item-specific fall-protection penalties
This case returned to the Commission after an earlier decision affirmed numerous serious, rather than willful, fall-protection violations at J.A. Jones Construction's Chicago high-rise project and remanded for item-specific penalties. On remand, the ALJ evaluated the fall distance, degree of…
Triangle Engineering Corp.
Mixed construction ruling carries $1,350 in penalties
Triangle Engineering was the general contractor building a prison in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. The ALJ affirmed serious violations involving site-specific safety instruction, missing edge guardrails, an accessible crane swing radius, and an unprotected excavation. She also affirmed other-than-serious…
B & M Construction
Three scaffold access and fall-protection items affirmed
B & M Construction performed asbestos removal around a boiler at a City of Lubbock power plant. OSHA found no access ladder, two unguarded openings in a walkway about 12 feet above the ground, and an unguarded I-beam used as a walkway. B & M argued that employees had not worked on the boiler…
Ocean Concrete Contractors, Inc.
Floor-opening and rebar hazards affirmed
Ocean Concrete was a subcontractor constructing a building at the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia. Employees worked at the edges of an unguarded five-by-eight-foot stairwell opening and an unguarded open-sided platform about eight feet above the ground. They also worked near uncapped…
Redondo Construction Corporation
Ladder and repeat guardrail violations affirmed
Redondo Construction was the general contractor for a pier and passenger-terminal project in San Juan, Puerto Rico. OSHA found a portable ladder whose side rails did not extend three feet above the landing and that lacked a required grabrail, even though employees used it for access. OSHA also…
Ludvik Electric
Unguarded platform citation dismissed under multi-employer defense
A Ludvik Electric employee fell to his death from an unguarded equipment-support deck at a Colorado construction site. The judge found that the deck was a covered work platform and that Ludvik could have anticipated employee use of it. Ludvik did not create or control the missing guardrails because…
Joseph B. Fay Co.
Bridge-edge fall citation vacated
Joseph P. Fay Company was removing a bridge deck in Columbia, New Jersey. OSHA alleged that two employees walked within a few feet of an unguarded bridge edge more than 25 feet above the ground. The judge found that the compliance officer could not reliably identify the workers as Fay employees and…
Vogel Brothers
Four serious construction violations affirmed, two vacated
Vogel Brothers Building Company was the general contractor on a wastewater administration building project in Tampa, Florida. The judge affirmed serious violations involving an unavailable fire extinguisher at a diesel fueling area, unguarded floor edges, an unbarricaded crane swing radius, and…
Baker Masonry, Inc.
Stairway and balcony guardrail citations vacated for unproven employee exposure
Baker Masonry, Inc. was a masonry subcontractor at the construction of the Radisson Hotel in Savannah, Georgia. A fatal fall in the hotel's atrium triggered an OSHA investigation, and the compliance officer expanded the inspection to the subcontractors. OSHA cited Baker for a serious violation, for…
Daak Corporation
Default order remanded for good-cause determination
Daak Corporation did not appear for its scheduled hearing, and the ALJ granted the Secretary a default judgment. After hearing the Secretary's evidence, the judge affirmed 14 construction citations and assessed $7,200 in total penalties. Daak's vice president then petitioned for review and made…
Tri-State Construction, Inc. and National Engineering & Contracting Company
Inspection upheld and bridge-edge item vacated
Tri-State and National worked on a multi-employer interstate-highway rehabilitation project in Cincinnati. The employers challenged OSHA's initial warrantless inspection of an outdoor bridge work area and the later project-wide inspection conducted under a warrant. The Commission held that the…
John Quinlan, t/a Quinlan Enterprises
Permanent-floor guardrail violation affirmed
Quinlan was the steel-erection subcontractor on a two-story building where employees worked near the edge of a permanent concrete second floor about 20 feet above the ground. A single wire rope ran around the perimeter at about 42 inches, but there was no midrail. Quinlan argued that the…
R & R Builders, Inc.
Safety-belt violation remains willful
R & R Builders was a drywall subcontractor cited for safety-program, training, safety-belt, guardrail, and ground-fault protection violations at a condominium project. The Commission affirmed the safety-program, training, safety-belt, and guardrail items, but reduced three of them from willful to a…
Contractors Welding of Western New York, Inc.
Providing life vests did not require their use
Contractors Welding employees repaired a drawbridge while working near deep water. Approved life vests were available at the site, but the welders were not wearing them. The Commission held that the standard's requirement to "provide" life vests meant to furnish or make them available, not to…
The Ceco Corporation and McDevitt & Street Company
Shallow cavity ruling remanded
Ceco was a concrete-forming subcontractor and McDevitt & Street was the general contractor at a construction site with an unguarded cavity in a sixth-floor forming deck. The cavity was approximately 10 by 12 feet and 20¾ inches deep. The judge vacated the citation because an employee could not fall…
Spancrete Northeast, Inc.
Repeated guardrail violation affirmed after defenses fail
Spancrete Northeast employees grouted a mezzanine floor about 13 feet, 8 inches above the ground while working near hundreds of feet of unguarded perimeter. The Commission reversed the judge and found a violation of 29 C.F.R. § 1926.500(d)(1). Spancrete's greater-hazard defense failed because it…
Pace Construction Corp.
Serious scaffold and balcony fall hazards affirmed
A Pace Construction employee fell 30 feet from an unguarded outrigger scaffold and suffered serious injuries at a Florida construction project. The Commission affirmed that Pace failed to require safety belts and used another scaffold with unsecured planking and incomplete guardrails. It accepted…
Tri-City Electrical Contractors, Inc.
Ladder settlement approved with $100 penalty
Tri-City Electrical Contractors was cited for unsecured portable ladders, improperly constructed job-made ladders, and unguarded open-sided floors at an apartment construction project. The Commission approved a settlement in which the Secretary withdrew the unsecured-ladder item and its $300…
Whiting-Turner Contracting Company
Floor-edge violation reclassified as serious for $50
Whiting-Turner managed construction of two four-story hospital towers where floor perimeters were unguarded or protected only by sagging single-wire ropes. Its three onsite employees performed engineering inspections and regularly worked near those edges. The ALJ found a violation but classified it…
Dun-Par Engineered Form Company
Serious fall protection violation affirmed after court remand
Dun-Par was a concrete-form subcontractor whose employees worked at unguarded floor edges 38 to 46 feet above the ground. Guardrails and safety belts were infeasible for the work, but the Eighth Circuit required Dun-Par to prove that other protective measures were unavailable. On remand, the…
Formwork Services Inc.
Falling-material citation withdrawn and remaining rulings became final
Formwork Services was a concrete-forming subcontractor on an Atlanta high-rise project where falling lumber struck another contractor's employee, who then fell to his death. The judge found a serious general-duty-clause violation for inadequate protection against falling materials, but reduced its…
Martin Wright Electric Company
Serious citation withdrawn in approved settlement
OSHA cited Martin Wright Electric for a serious guardrail violation with a proposed $250 penalty and a nonserious electrical violation with no proposed penalty. The judge affirmed the guardrail item but reduced its penalty to $75, and vacated the electrical item. During Commission review, the…
Dun-Par Engineered Form Company
Unguarded-floor citation affirmed
A Dun-Par employee died after falling 131 feet from an unguarded eleventh-floor perimeter while banding stacks of lumber. The Commission held that the employee was exposed to a fall hazard while working 2 to 3.5 feet from the edge and that the foreman knew or should have known the assigned work…
Dun-Par Engineered Form Company
Fall-protection citation vacated as infeasible
Dun-Par employees performed concrete formwork on unguarded upper floors of an eleven-story construction project. The Commission replaced its strict impossibility defense with an infeasibility defense that considers the practical realities of the workplace. It held that Dun-Par proved perimeter…
J.L. Foti Construction Co., Inc.
Three construction items affirmed, one vacated
J.L. Foti performed masonry work as a subcontractor on a hospital project and objected when OSHA inspected its enclosed elevator-shaft work area without a warrant. The general contractor consented to the inspection, but the two Commission members divided on whether that consent overrode Foti’s…
Lewis & Lambert Metal Contractors, Inc.
Electrical item affirmed and guardrail items vacated
Lewis & Lambert was a sheet-metal subcontractor at a building project in Fort Worth, Texas. The Commission affirmed a ground-fault-protection violation because the company could have installed a portable ground-fault circuit interrupter for its employees' electric tools. It vacated three guardrail…
Carpenter Contracting Corporation
Parking-garage perimeter citation vacated for lack of employee access proof
Carpenter Contracting installed large precast concrete sections while building a multilevel parking garage. OSHA cited unguarded deck perimeters adjacent to the bay under construction, where falls could range from 10 to 40 feet. The Commission accepted the judge's unchallenged finding that…
Dun-Par Engineered Form Co.
Excess serious-violation penalty vacated and remanded
The judge affirmed a serious fall-protection violation involving unguarded floors or, alternatively, missing safety belts. Although the Secretary had originally alleged a repeated violation, the judge classified it as serious and assessed a $1,620 penalty. The Commission held that the penalty…
Novak & Co., Inc.
Multi-employer worksite citations vacated
Novak, a plumbing subcontractor, was cited for allegedly inadequate overhead protection, improperly stored gas cylinders belonging to another contractor, unguarded floor perimeters, and an open floor hole. The Commission vacated every item. The Secretary did not prove that the entrance canopy was…
Atlanta Forming Co., Inc.
Construction activity satisfied commerce coverage
Atlanta Forming challenged only whether it was an employer engaged in a business affecting interstate commerce. The Commission held that construction of a multistory commercial building belongs to a class of activity affecting commerce and that construction materials and services have an interstate…
Williams Enterprises, Inc.
Willful steel-erection fall violations affirmed in part
Williams Enterprises employees repeatedly installed and carried metal decking at heights up to 58 feet without temporary floors, safety belts, or nets, despite repeated OSHA warnings and an imminent-danger notice. The Commission held that general construction standards can supplement steel-erection…
Carpenter Rigging Incorporated
Floor-opening citation vacated under the specific-standard rule
Carpenter Rigging was cited after an employee used a stairwell near an inadequately guarded opening with a possible 25-foot fall. The citation alleged a violation of the general construction rule for guarding open-sided floors. The Commission majority affirmed the judge's decision to vacate because…
Power Plant Division, Brown & Root, Inc.
Fatal duct fall citation affirmed
A Brown & Root welder fell 43 feet to his death from an elevated surface inside a large air duct while inspecting a defective weld. The surface had been used for assembly work and remained available for inspection and cleanup, but its open side had only a low single wire rope rather than a standard…
Weisblatt Electric Company, Inc.
Multi-employer fall-hazard citations vacated
Weisblatt, an elevator subcontractor, sent two employees to a renovation site to determine whether conditions had improved enough for work to resume. They encountered unguarded openings, floors, ramps, stairs, and unfilled pan-type stair treads that Weisblatt neither created nor controlled. The…
Merritt Electric Company, Inc.
Late contest accepted and fall citation affirmed
Merritt promptly called OSHA to protest a citation, but the area director did not clearly explain that an informal conference would not substitute for a written contest. The Commission treated the later written contest as valid because the company's confusion was reasonably attributable to OSHA's…
Frank Swidzinski Company
Unguarded loading-platform citation affirmed
An employee stood inches from the unguarded end of a fourth-floor material platform while directing a crane, exposing him to a 41-foot fall. The Commission rejected the employer's employee-misconduct defense because there was no relevant work rule, and rejected impossibility because blocks could be…
Chapman Construction Co., Inc.
Repeated grounding and serious fall violations affirmed
A portable circular saw previously cited for lack of grounding again failed a continuity test, and employees used stairways and landings with missing or inadequate rails. The Commission held that inexpensive continuity testing would have revealed the saw's latent grounding defect through reasonable…
Erskine-Fraser Co.
Unguarded girder citation affirmed
Steel-erection employees used an unguarded concrete girder 28 to 30 feet above the ground as a walkway between piers. Although the general contractor was responsible for guardrails, the Commission held that each employer remained responsible for protecting its own employees and that Erskine-Fraser…
Republic Roofing Corporation
Roof-edge PPE citation remanded under revised burden rule
OSHA originally alleged that Republic Roofing failed to guard a roof perimeter, then amended the case to allege that employees lacked personal fall protection. The judge vacated the amended PPE citation because he placed the burden on the Secretary to plead and prove that the equipment was…
Masonry Contractors, Inc.
Fall-protection items affirmed and saw-grounding item vacated
Masonry Contractors employees worked on the seventh floor near unguarded shafts, floor holes, open sides, and a material-hoist landing. The subcontractor did not inspect the floor, warn its employees, request correction by the general contractor, or use realistic alternative protection, and it…
Daniel International Corp.
Pre-Barlow's inspection evidence remained admissible
OSHA inspected Daniel International's Missouri power-plant construction project in 1977 without a warrant, before the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc. Daniel sought to suppress the inspection evidence, arguing that its project manager had not voluntarily consented and had…
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.