Today's post comes from guest author Kit Case, from Causey Law Firm. Wall to Wall Tile & Stone of Vancouver, Wash. has been fined $261,000 for failing to protect workers' from exposure to silica dust and other health hazards associated with stone slab grinding. The Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) cited the employer for [...]
Today's post comes from guest author Rod Rehm, from Rehm, Bennett & Moore.The incident referred to in this article was extremely tragic, as two workers' were killed in April. Now OSHA has found that Nebraska Railcar Cleaning Services knew “that moments before the blast, an air quality check indicated a serious risk of an explosion. [...]
According to a recent article published by the U.S. Department of Labor, workplace fatalities have increased from 4,585 in 2013 to 4,679 in 2014. This is the highest number of workplace fatalities since 2008 when 5,214 deaths were reported to the Department of Labor. The most shocking rise in workplace deaths occurred in the oil-and-gas [...]
A sports agent called me recently about a baseball player who was about to have “Tommy John surgery” and asked whether it would be covered under workers'’ compensation. I had heard about this surgery for years but never knew much about it, so I asked Elayna Slocum, a paralegal in my office, to do some [...]
Today's post comes from guest author Catherine Stanton, from Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano.A few weeks ago, I read about a crisis occurring in Pakistan and India. In Pakistan, a week-long heatwave killed more than 1,200 people and in India, the heat killed close to 2,200. Tens of thousands more were treated at [...]
On April 24, 2013, an eight-story factory, known as The Rana Plaza, in Bangladesh came tumbling down killing 1,100 workers' and leaving 2,500 injured. This number includes workers' and their children that were in the onsite nursery at the time the building collapsed. The most disturbing part is that the employers knew that the building [...]
On July 22, 2015, Hassell Construction Co. was cited by OSHA for 16 safety violations (including 6 egregious willful violations) and given a whopping $423,900 fine. Hassell Construction Co. is a construction company based in Richmond, Texas with about 150 employees that construct water and sewer lines around Houston, Texas. The employer was given 15 [...]
Original post titled “Bounce Back” in Time Magazine June 1, 2015 (subscription required). For almost two decades, Dr. Stephen Southwick, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and Dr. Dennis Chaney, Dean at Ichan School of Medicine, have been studying what makes some people “bounce back” faster than others after a traumatic or stressful experience. Their main conclusion [...]
Today's post comes from guest author Catherine Stanton, from Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano.I was horrified when I recently read about a worker for a tuna company who was killed when he was cooked to death at the company’s California canning factory. According to the New York Daily News, the worker, Jose Melena, [...]
Today's post comes from guest author Catherine Stanton, from Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano.As an attorney who practices in the field of Workers’ Compensation, there are some events that are seminal in the history of workplace safety. One of those events was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which occurred on March 25, 2011. [...]