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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Salmon River Wood Products
Settlement approved and fee application dismissed
The case arose after a Salmon River logging employee was killed when a tree he felled struck a rotted Douglas fir, causing it to fall on him. The administrative law judge had affirmed danger-tree, backcut, and retraining violations with $12,500 in total penalties and vacated four other items. After…
Don Brown Logging & Avery Logging Co., Inc.
Matched tree-felling backcuts violated logging rule
Don Brown Logging and Avery Logging trained fallers to make backcuts level with the horizontal facecut when using the Humboldt felling method. OSHA's logging standard required the backcut to be above the facecut to create a platform intended to reduce tree kickback. Judge Stanley M. Schwartz held…
McNeilly Logging
Danger-tree and backcut citations affirmed against Montana logger
McNeilly Logging was cutting timber at the Dirty Ike Timber Sale in Montana when OSHA inspected following an accident. A sawyer, Michael Boehm, was seriously injured when a dead standing "snag" toppled and struck him while he was cutting a felled larch; he and a coworker had tested the snag…
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review, an ALJ decision becomes a final order under 29 U.S.C. § 661(j): it binds the parties in that case but is not binding precedent in other cases.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.