If you’ve spent any time around MSHA cases, you already know that jurisdiction is one of those issues that never quite stays settled. Every few years, a case comes along that forces everyone – operators, contractors, inspectors, and lawyers – to rethink what “mine” actually means under the Mine Act. Secretary of Labor (MSHA) v. KC Transport, Inc. is one…
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I need to be totally honest with you, folks. Sometimes I get close to the due date for this column and I’m utterly at a loss about what to write. That was the case a couple of months back, when I told you I wanted to write about developments at the Department of Labor, but couldn’t do it without risking…
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You know, some months when I sit down to write this column, the topics just present themselves to me. There’s some new Commission case, or some development over at MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, that screams to be written about. The problem these days, though, is that while a lot is going on over at the Department of…
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This month I’d like to tell you about a problem that really shouldn’t be a problem. I’m talking about the current tempest-in-a-teapot that is approval of settlement motions in Mine Act enforcement cases. I’ll bet you already know this, but the vast majority of penalty cases that are filed with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (which I’m…
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This month, I want to go back to basics and talk about the process and considerations that might drive a mine operator’s decision to challenge an MSHA citation or order. As you know, the Mine Act requires an inspector to issue a citation or order if he believes an operator “has violated this Act, or any mandatory health or safety…
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By Willa B. Perlmutter So, last week I had the pleasure of attending a seminar put on by the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. It was called a “safety seminar,” but that’s kind of a misnomer. With one interesting exception, a mine operator who talked about how they’d improved mobile equipment…
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By Willa B. Perlmutter So, this column is going to be a little different from my usual observations about what MSHA is doing these days. Given the super-charged political climate and the fact that my Washington D.C. roots go very deep, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going to happen in November – and what it could mean for…
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By Willa B. Perlmutter Well, guys, I hate to say I told you so, but…well, I told you so. A few months back, I wrote about a whistleblower retaliation case that had just come out of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, and shared with you that I thought the Commission’s reasoning gave cause for alarm. (I know,…
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Lately I’ve been giving some thought to what MSHA considers “enhanced enforcement,” which really refers to enforcement actions that MSHA takes against a mine operator beyond the § 104(a) citations that are the most frequent result of a mine inspection. (We call them “§ 104(a) citations” because the authority for issuing them comes from § 104(a) of the Mine Act.…
Read MoreBy Joe C. Matteo and Willa B. Perlmutter Have you ever wondered if polluted water that leaks from a settling pond into groundwater and eventually reaches a river is a “discrete” source of pollution? Or why it matters? You can likely envision a scenario where a mining operation has settling ponds that leak into groundwater before eventually entering a waterway.…
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