Opinion ID: 197419
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Violation A.

Text: 36 The Commission found that Gioioso breached the excavation standard, 29 C.F.R. § 1926.651(e), which mandates that [n]o employee shall be permitted underneath loads handled by lifting or digging equipment. The petitioner assigns error. We see none. 37 The citation underpinning Violation A states in relevant part that Gioioso's personnel were exposed to serious injury while working in a trench in which a section of 12 water line was being lowered. In adjudicating this citation, the ALJ credited the testimony of two compliance officers who described seeing a ten-foot section of cast metal pipe suspended from the bucket of an excavating machine by a chain sling. As the pipe moved, it rotated around the single point of suspension and passed over the heads of the men who were working in the trench. While the observations of the two compliance officers were not entirely congruent, the ALJ determined that the modest discrepancies in their accounts were easily explained by the officers' differing vantage points. He also found that a photograph taken shortly thereafter corroborated their testimony. Keeping in mind the frailty of Gioioso's rebuttal--its foreman, Santone, stated only that he did not recall the pipe passing overhead--there is no principled basis on which a court could justify substituting its judgment for the factfinder's. See General Dynamics, 599 F.2d at 463. 38