Source: http://managing-osha.com/articles/volks-decision-district-columbia-circuit-court-appeals-clarifies-osh-act%E2%80%99s-statute
Timestamp: 2017-06-27 17:26:07
Document Index: 570206048

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1904', '§ 1904', '§ 1904', '§ 1904', '§ 1910', '§ 1910']

The Volks Decision: District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Clarifies the OSH Act’s Statute of Limitations | Managing OSHA Skip to main content
Agency News & Initiatives Audits Chemical Safety Board Combustible Dust Discrimination / Whistleblowers Enforcement News & Trends General Duty Clause Machine Guarding Managing OSHA Inspections Multiemployer Presentations Privilege Process Safety Management Recordkeeping Rulemaking Significant Legal Decisions The Volks Decision: District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Clarifies the OSH Act’s Statute of Limitations
Significant Legal Decisions The Volks Decision: District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Clarifies the OSH Act’s Statute of Limitations
The employer had been cited for violating three recordkeeping regulations: (1) 29 C.F.R. § 1904.29(b)(3), which requires employers to prepare an incident report and a separate injury log “within seven (7) calendar days of receiving information that a recordable injury or illness has occurred;” (2) 29 C.F.R. § 1904.32(a)(2), which requires the employer to maintain a year-end summary report of all recordable injuries during the calendar year; and (3) 29 C.F.R. § 1904.32(b)(3), which requires that a “company executive” certify the year-end summary.
The employer was alleged to have improperly recorded injuries which took place between January 11, 2002 and April 22, 2006 — these dates were a maximum of 54 months prior to the issuance of the citations and a minimum of six months and 10 days beforehand. The regulations also contain a document retention requirement, by which employers must “save” all of these documents for five years from the end of the calendar year the documents cover. 29 C.F.R. § 1904.33(a). Notably, the employer was not cited for violating the document retention requirement.
The Volks Decision represents a major departure from OSHRC’s historical interpretation of the OSH Act’s SOL and could impact the measure of timeliness of a range of OSHA citations. There are several document retention requirements in OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard, for example, which OSHA has argued toll the OSH Act’s SOL, such as 29 C.F.R. § 1910.119(e)(5), which requires an employer to retain documentation showing that certain findings and conclusions of process hazard analyses (PHAs) have been resolved, and 29 C.F.R. § 1910.119(o)(4), which requires an employer to retain documentation showing that the findings from a compliance audit have been addressed.
Until now, OSHA has asserted that violations of these PHA and audit provisions are continuing violations because the improper documentation continues. In fact, during the refining National Emphasis Program, OSHA issued citations alleging violations of these documentation requirements involving errors that occurred ten to twenty years ago. But applying the Volks Decision analysis, the relevant “occurrence” which starts the clock on the SOL would have taken place when the inadequate PHA or audit documentation was created. OSHA would then have only six months from the date of that occurrence to issue a citation for faulty documentation. Application of this analysis to the PSM documentation requirements is currently pending before OSHRC.