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.
Falcon Steel Company, Inc.
High-rise fall violations affirmed for $16,000
Falcon Steel erected structural steel for a 60-story Philadelphia high-rise and was cited for several fall hazards. The Commission affirmed a willful violation for using a crane-suspended man basket to carry employees to upper floors when elevators and ladders provided a conventional alternative…
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…
Williams Enterprises, Inc.
Perimeter cable violation reinstated for $630
Williams Enterprises performed structural steel erection on a Washington, D.C., building project. Employees came within one foot of two unguarded edges on a mostly decked second-tier floor, with fall distances of 20 to 30 feet. The ALJ vacated the perimeter-cable citation after concluding that…
Midwest Steel Erection, Inc.
Steel-erection settlement approved with remaining rulings final
Three OSHA inspections of Midwest's structural-steel work produced serious, willful, repeat, and other-than-serious citations with $23,200 proposed. The judge affirmed several fall-protection and ladder items, reduced one willful item to serious, affirmed the repeat and other-than-serious…
Williams Enterprises, Inc.
Four citation items and $2,300 penalty became final
Williams Enterprises was the steel-erection contractor for a multistory building in Virginia. OSHA cited perimeter fall protection, an improperly positioned and unsecured ladder, an unbarricaded crane swing radius, missing perimeter railings, and gaps in temporary flooring. The judge vacated the…
Adams Steel Erection, Inc.
Perimeter and safety-net items affirmed, ladderway item vacated
Adams Steel was the steel-erection subcontractor on a multistory Pittsburgh construction project. The Commission affirmed a perimeter-railing item because decking remained temporary until it was welded into the structure as permanent flooring. It vacated a ladderway-opening item because the…
Williams Enterprises of Georgia, Inc.
Safety-net and floor-opening items vacated
Williams Enterprises was the steel-erection subcontractor on a high-rise construction project in Atlanta. In this 1986 decision, the Commission held that the steel-erection rules displaced the general safety-net standard and vacated the exterior-fall allegations under 29 C.F.R. §§ 1926.105(a) and…
Adams Steel Erection, Inc.
Safety-net and hard-hat citation items vacated
Adams Steel erected structural steel on a four-story building and used temporary flooring below employees working on perimeter beams. The Commission majority vacated a safety-net item because the steel-erection fall-protection rules in Subpart R governed the hazard and preempted the general…
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…
National Industrial Constructors, Inc.
Power-plant construction violations resolved
The Commission reviewed numerous fall-protection, trenching, machine, electrical, scaffold, ladder, fire-extinguisher, and equipment-alarm items from construction of a Nebraska power plant. It rejected dismissal for delayed citation issuance because the employer did not prove prejudice. It held…
Roanoke Iron & Bridge Works, Inc.
Column-sliding violation affirmed, other fall-protection charges rejected
Roanoke Iron & Bridge Works was erecting a five-story office building when employees regularly slid down vertical steel columns instead of using an available ladder for the final 50 feet to the ground. The Commission rejected the judge's greater-hazard defense because the record did not show that…
Riverview Steel Erectors, Inc.
Steel-erection perimeter citation affirmed under a substituted standard
A Riverview Steel Erectors employee swept snow about one foot from the unguarded edge of a temporary metal-decked third floor, 22 feet above the ground. The judge found that the general open-sided floor rule did not apply because the work was still part of steel erection. He amended the charge to…
Julius Nasso Concrete Corporation
Horse-scaffold guardrail claim remanded for hearing
An employee allegedly worked on an unguarded horse scaffold only eight feet above its supporting floor but next to a building perimeter where a fall could extend about 100 feet. The judge granted summary judgment for the employer because the scaffold itself was less than ten feet high. The…
Carr Erectors, Inc.
Steel-floor perimeter item affirmed and elevator-platform item vacated
Carr Erectors was performing steel erection on a high-rise building in Columbus, Ohio. On the thirteenth floor, employees accessed a temporary steel-and-rebar floor section with no perimeter protection next to a twelve-foot gap. The Commission held that the specific steel-erection perimeter rule…
Pima Construction Company
Steel-erection citations affirmed in part
Pima Construction was the steel-erection subcontractor for a nine-story courthouse project in Tucson, Arizona. The Commission found that employees regularly traveled near an unguarded second-floor edge, uncovered floor openings, and stairways without railings. It replaced the cited general…
A. Munder & Son, Inc. and Robert Catino, Inc.
Accessible hazards separated from remote conditions
A. Munder & Son was a sheet-metal subcontractor, and Robert Catino was a carpentry subcontractor, at a New York City building project. Both companies' employees passed near unsecured oxygen and acetylene cylinders that lacked valve caps, so the Commission affirmed the cylinder-storage violations…
A. J. McNulty & Co., Inc.
Steel-erection fall violations affirmed
A. J. McNulty was a steel-construction subcontractor on a multistory building project. Three employees worked near the fourth-floor edge without safety belts, lanyards, or nets, and one employee welded while leaning or straddling the edge 40 to 50 feet above the ground. The Commission found that…
The Ashton Company, Inc.
Steel-erection railing rule controlled temporary floors
The Ashton Company was the general contractor building a multistory county courthouse in Tucson, Arizona. During the steel-erection stage, employees installed plywood decking and poured concrete on partially completed second and third floors. OSHA cited Ashton under the general open-sided-floor…
Kaywood Construction Company
Six final violations affirmed with $200 penalty
OSHA cited Kaywood Construction for posting and recordkeeping failures, a sagging perimeter rope, short ladder rails, and employees working without fall protection. The company's notice of contest challenged only the proposed penalties. The judge nevertheless reviewed the merits, vacated five…
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.