Occupational Safety & Health
Vedder Price has one of the preeminent occupational safety and health law practices in the country. The practice is national in scope, with firm attorneys representing employers all over the United States and its territories with respect to federal and state plan matters under the Occupational Safety and Health Act ("OSH Act") and its state law equivalents, as well as with respect to other wide-ranging workplace health and safety issues.
The firm's practice covers the broad spectrum of occupational safety and health law issues. Vedder Price has been heavily involved in OSHA standard-setting activities since the early 1970s, representing employers and associations in rule-making proceedings and judicial review activities with respect to the vinyl chloride, diving and respirator standards.
The largest portion of the firm's OSHA practice is devoted to defending employers with respect to OSHA and state plan enforcement activities. Depending on the severity and scope of an inspection, firm attorneys may get involved when an inspection begins, and they will maintain active participation throughout the inspection. This level of involvement particularly occurs in the context of an inspection arising from a serious accident, a fatality or a catastrophic occurrence, such as a plant explosion or fire. With the increasing potential for criminal liability both under the OSH Act and under state criminal statutes, and with the potential for "egregious" citation liability, the firm has seen a rise in client requests for its attorneys to get involved at earlier inspection stages to ensure that all necessary protections are available to employers.
Of course, once a citation issues, the firm represents employers in contest litigation. Where historically a citation might have involved a proposed penalty of only a few thousand dollars, under the OSH Act's new penalty scheme, employers are seeing five- and even six-digit citations for relatively ordinary matters. Often the firm's representation requires nothing more than "cutting a better deal" with the Solicitor than the client was able to accomplish through the informal conference. In other cases, litigation may go through all the contest steps, including pleadings, discovery, settlement negotiations, a hearing and appeals to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission and the appellate courts.
Unlike many other attorneys who practice in the OSHA area and come out of a government agency background, the OSHA attorneys at Vedder Price all are experienced courtroom and administrative agency litigators. This allows them to try their own OSHA cases, rather than seek the assistance of other firm trial attorneys.
In addition to standard-setting and citation defense activities, the firm also engages in a significant amount of safety and health consulting and litigation avoidance work. In this regard, the firm has been counsel to one major petrochemical company's safety and health audit team and has designed audit programs for other clients. The OSHA group performs privileged paper audits for clients of their safety and health programs, and has assisted clients in the development of illness and injury reduction programs.
Vedder Price is one of the nation's leading law firms representing clients in workplace-related criminal liability matters. One attorney working in the OSHA area is a former Assistant United States Attorney. He and other firm members have represented employers who were the subjects or targets of investigations for possible criminal violations of the OSH Act as well as possible state criminal violations. This included representation of employers before federal grand juries and federal and state law enforcement agencies. Firm attorneys have managed OSHA inspections involving workplace fatalities and catastrophies with significant potential for criminal liability in Illinois, New York, Texas, Montana, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Puerto Rico.
Vedder Price OSHA attorneys also do substantial safety and health training and lecturing. Courses prepared and taught by firm attorneys include developing an effective workplace safety and health program; compliance with the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard; ergonomic issues under Workers' Compensation, the OSH Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and products liability law; workplace violence avoidance; and various general OSHA training programs designed for a variety of audiences such as in-house counsel, safety and health professionals and employers generally.
The breadth and depth of the firm's experience and personnel allow it to assign workplace safety and health law matters in a cost-effective manner to attorneys with experience appropriate to the type and sophistication of the issue. Similarly, the large size of the firm's OSHA practice area results in cost savings to clients by virtue of the firm's library of preexisting pleadings, research and discovery requests. The long-term personal contacts with National Office and Regional OSHA personnel also allow firm attorneys to handle many matters for clients on an informal basis, thereby reducing litigation costs.
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