OSHA uses per-employee citations to build big penalty
A construction company faces $789,000 in fines and its owner could spend up to six months in jail following a worker fatality.
Legal
$11M verdict: Why didn’t workers’ comp cover this fatality?
Workers’ comp laws usually prohibit lawsuits against companies when a worker is seriously injured or killed on the job. But a lawyer in Texas found a way to skirt the law and win a huge jury award.
Daunting task: Addressing safety and health claims by 9/11 workers
Imagine a workplace safety and health lawsuit involving more than 9,000 plaintiffs, 90 government agencies and private companies, tons of pages of court documents, and several hundred lawyers. It’s the 9/11 Ground Zero case.
Engineer’s texting caused train crash that killed 25
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation shows a collision between two trains in California in 2008 that killed 25 people and injured 102 more was caused by the engineer running a red light while text-messaging.
Is this a good method to reduce workplace injuries?
Criminal prosecution of companies where safety violations cause serious injuries or fatalities are rare in the U.S. With that in mind, it’s interesting to note how such cases are handled in another democracy.
Workers awarded $100M, even without major health effects
BP must pay more than $100 million in damages for exposing contract workers to toxic chemicals, even though none of the 10 employees in the case suffered major long-term health effects.
Employee misconduct or employer negligence?
When a worker doesn’t use PPE and dies on the job as a result, is the employer responsible or is it a case of employee misconduct?
New campaign launched for harsher OSHA fines
“Sixteen workers are killed a day in the United States because of reckless negligence on the part of their employers,” according to a new Web site.
Law requires companies to provide more safety information
A measure, just signed into law by President Obama, would prohibit chemical companies from classifying safety information as “sensitive” in an effort to keep it from becoming public. The new law is in response to a workplace explosion that caused two fatalities.
