Opinion ID: 197922
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Statutory and Regulatory Regime.

Text: In this instance, the plaintiff claims that workplace inspections, negligently performed by OSHA compliance officers, proximately caused her injuries. In analyzing the nature of this conduct, we begin with the language of the OSH Act because it will most often be true that the general aims and policies of the controlling statute will be evident from its text, id. at 324, and, in turn, these aims and policies will offer valuable insights into the nature of the conduct. In relevant part, the OSH Act authorizes the Secretary of Labor to inspect and investigate during regular working hours and at other reasonable times, and within reasonable limits and in a reasonable manner, any such place of employment and all pertinent conditions, structures, machines, apparatus, devices, equipment, and materials therein . . . . 29 U.S.C. 657(a). Under this authority, OSHA conducts both programmed general administrative inspections known in the bureaucratic argot that OSHA so readily attracts as full-scope or wall-to-wall inspections and more focused efforts pinpointed to threats of imminent danger. Aside from a reasonableness limitation on the time and manner of inspections, the statute places virtually no constraint on the Secretary's discretion to conduct such inspections in any way that she deems fit. See Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 601 (1981). Comparison of this language to a parallel provision in the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act (MSH Act), 30 U.S.C. 801 et seq., another health and safety statute administered by the Secretary of Labor, strongly suggests that Congress's choice of words was no accident. In defining the Secretary's responsibilities regarding mine inspections, the MSH Act provides that, in order to determine whether an imminent danger exists in a mine and whether there is compliance with the mandatory health or safety standards or with a citation, order, or decision issued under applicable law, the Secretary shall make inspections of each underground coal or other mine in its entirety at least four times a year, and of each surface coal or other mine in its entirety at least two times a year. 30 U.S.C. 813(a) (emphasis supplied).For our purposes, the stark differences between the inspection provisions of the MSH Act and those of the OSH Act are extremely significant. Whereas Congress was careful to mandate comprehensive inspections in the MSH Act, it left the scope and detail of OSH Act inspections to the Secretary's discretion. Had Congress wished to impose upon OSHA an obligation to inspect every corner of every plant that it visited, we think it is highly likely that Congress would have expressed its intention by choosing language comparable to that which it used in crafting the MSH Act. We recognize that, by its plain terms, the OSH Act confers discretion only upon the Secretary, not upon compliance officers and it is the latter's conduct that concerns us.Nevertheless, the legislative rules governing the authority of compliance officers mimic the statute and grant these officials broad discretion over the scope, manner, and detail of general administrative inspections. The regulations' stated goal is to set forth general policies for enforcement of the inspection, citation, and proposed penalty provisions of the Act. 29 C.F.R. 1903.1. Echoing the language of 29 U.S.C. 657(a), section 1903.3 of the regulations confers upon compliance officers the unbridled power, subject only to limits of reasonableness, to enter workplaces, inspect any piece of equipment or other pertinent item, and interview any person in order to carry out the Secretary's statutory mission. See 29 C.F.R. 1903.3(a). To be sure, the regulations contain a sprinkling of mandatory directives. See, e.g., id. at 1903.7 (obligating compliance officers, inter alia, to present their credentials at the start of an inspection, to use reasonable precautions when taking photographs and samples, to wear appropriate protective clothing, to avoid unreasonable disruption of the workplace, and to confer with the employer in order to inform him of any apparent safety or health violations disclosed by the inspection).Save for these and, for our purposes, other similarly innocuous details, the regulations neither mandate a particular modusoperandi for conducting inspections nor otherwise materially restrict compliance officers' flexibility. Of particular importance, the regulations do not prescribe any specific regimen governing the scope or detail of general administrative inspections performed by compliance officers.