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.
No decisions match these filters
Try a different search term or clear the filters.
Western Steel Manufacturing Company
Squaring-shear guarding violation affirmed
Western Steel used an unguarded Niagara squaring shear to cut metal. The Commission held that the machine was not a mechanical power press because its moving element was a blade rather than a slide fitted with tools or dies. The general machine-guarding standard therefore applied, and the evidence…
Long Manufacturing Company, N.C., Inc.
Press-brake penalty affirmed, punch-press item vacated
Long manufactured farm equipment and had been ordered to guard the operating points of two press brakes. It installed paired palm buttons, but the buttons were close enough to operate with one hand and could also be bypassed with plug-in devices. Supervisors knew that employees sometimes defeated…
Diebold, Inc.
Press brakes required point-of-operation guarding
Diebold operated unguarded press brakes and mechanical punch presses at three Ohio plants. The Commission held that press brakes, although excluded from the specific mechanical-power-press rule, remained subject to the general machine-guarding requirements. It rejected Diebold's vagueness and…
Queen City Sheet Metal and Roofing, Inc.
Punch-press citation vacation affirmed
OSHA cited Queen City because its mechanical punch presses lacked point-of-operation guards under the general machine-guarding standard at 29 C.F.R. § 1910.212(a)(3)(ii). The judge vacated the citation, reasoning that the more specific mechanical-power-press standard governed and relying on…
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review, an ALJ decision becomes a final order under 29 U.S.C. § 661(j): it binds the parties in that case but is not binding precedent in other cases.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.