Welcome to “Mining MSHA,” a regular series of posts focusing on mine safety fundamentals – but designed for both new and experienced mine safety professionals. This series will help safety professionals develop their MSHA legal knowledge, as we explore over 40 years of case law developed by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission and its bench of Administrative Law Judges. You will want to share this series with your safety personnel at all levels, because understanding what MSHA can and cannot legally do is the first step in managing your relationship with this enforcement agency. Join your Fisher Phillips Mine Safety team as we mine legal knowledge from the body of Federal Mine Safety and Health law.
In our last article, we explored the concept of negligence and how it can impact a citation or order. We continue this series with a discussion of the unwarrantable failure designation. Operators should understand what an unwarrantable failure is and how to avoid an allegation of aggravated conduct. Finally, we will provide operators a list of best practices to avoid this elevated negligence determination.
