Practice Areas & Industries: Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Ogletree Deakins attorneys provide a broad range of workplace safety and health services to clients throughout the nation and wherever else our clients engage in business. We have considerable occupational safety and health ("OSH") expertise, which we use to assist our clients in the manufacturing, construction, general industry, and service sectors. Additionally, we have significant mine safety and health ("MSH") expertise, which we use in working with clients who own or operate metal, non-metal, and coal mines and related facilities, including stone quarries and sand and gravel pits.

Services Available

Our workplace safety and health attorneys are highly experienced in handling related trial and appellate litigation before courts and federal and state administrative agencies. We also engage in preventative work with our clients to enhance their workplace safety and health performance, achieve compliance with applicable federal and state laws, standards, and regulations, and to help limit the potential for related criminal and civil liability. Moreover, consistent with the Ogletree Deakins tradition, our workplace safety and health attorneys continually strive to blend their efforts with client initiatives to promote positive employee and community relations.

Ogletree Deakins OSH attorneys engage in a nationwide practice that includes the representation of employers in "egregious" and other significant litigation within the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission and corresponding state plan adjudicatory agencies. When a workplace accident occurs, the firm can quickly deploy an attorney-staffed fatality/catastrophe accident response team to help investigate the circumstances, assist in formulating recommendations to prevent a recurrence, and ensure the availability of legal privileges to help protect against undesired or forced disclosure of investigative results. Our attorneys are adept at effectively managing inspections conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") and its state plan counterparts, and in negotiating favorable informal settlements of OSHA citations. On the preventative side, we counsel clients to help ensure OSHA compliance, provide advice to enhance safety and health programs, and conduct safety and health audits.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration ("MSHA") inspects every mine in the nation no less than two to four times a year, and frequently conducts "special investigations" that can be used as the basis for civil liability and criminal prosecution of corporate officers and directors and other members of company management. When MSHA officials present themselves at a client's workplace, an Ogletree Deakins attorney can be there to help safeguard the client's rights. The firm's MSH attorneys defend clients before the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission and in federal courts in cases contesting citations, orders, and penalties, including discrimination cases. They also advise clients on the interpretation and application of MSHA regulations.

For those Ogletree Deakins clients desiring to have their voices heard in Washington, D.C. on safety and health matters, both our OSH and MSH attorneys are experienced in "getting things done" there, including responding to agency rulemaking initiatives on behalf of our clients. For instance, our OSH attorneys authored the rulemaking comments of the Society for Human Resource Management on the proposed OSHA Ergonomics Program Standard, and our MSH attorneys have assisted, in cooperation with industry trade association safety and legal committees, in drafting comments on a variety of MSHA rulemakings. Ogletree Deakins attorneys also have experience interfacing with numerous other federal agencies on safety and health matters, including the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Department of Transportation.