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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Petrongolo Contractors, Inc.
Repeat cave-in protection item affirmed
Petrongolo Contractors excavated a roughly 10-foot-deep street trench to replace a sewer manhole. OSHA cited the company for allegedly failing to classify the soil when designing timber shoring and for allowing employees to work in the trench before an adequate protective system was installed. The…
Scafar Contracting, Inc.
Two trench violations affirmed and three vacated
Scafar Contracting replaced an underground sewer line through a series of excavations in Newark, New Jersey. Judge Michael H. Schoenfeld found that employees building a manhole worked beside an inadequately protected excavation wall and that another trench used timber shoring that did not meet 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review, an ALJ decision becomes a final order under 29 U.S.C. § 661(j): it binds the parties in that case but is not binding precedent in other cases.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.