Federal Court Finds OSHA has Unlimited “Look-Back” Period to Search for Repeat Violations

From OMA Connections Partner, Frantz Ward: “Thanks to a recent federal appellate court decision, OSHA now has even more leeway to issue costly repeat citations to employers. As many employers know, there are different classifications for civil violations of OSHA regulations, including other-than-serious, serious, repeat, and willful. Penalties, both monetary and non-monetary, increase with higher classification levels. OSHA recently increased the maximum penalty for repeat violations to $129,336, and additional increases to the maximum penalty are expected.”

And: “… on February 14, 2018, a federal appellate court gave OSHA unlimited latitude to search employer citation histories as far back as necessary to establish repeat violations.”

Read more about this from Frantz Ward here. 3/2/2018

Here’s part of the OMA Workers’ Compensation Services team at the BWC Safety Congress & Expo this week: Karen James, Jeremy Sesco, Georgia Booth and Dan Noreen.