Opinion ID: 186475
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: New Task

Text: 17 As noted above, the mine safety regulation at issue requires that [m]iners assigned a new task ... be instructed in the safety and health aspects and safe work procedures of the task. 30 C.F.R. § 48.7(c). A task is a work assignment that includes duties of a job that occur on a regular basis and which requires physical abilities and job knowledge. Id. § 48.2(f). 18 The Secretary interprets the new task regulations as applying to those work assignments which, despite never having occurred at the particular mine before, are such that a reasonably prudent operator familiar with the mining industry and the protective purposes of the standard [would] have recognized... would occur on a regular basis. Resp. Br. of Sec'y of Labor at 10 (quoting ALJ Order, 25 F.M.S.H.R.C. at 383-84). 19 Twentymile challenges not the Secretary's interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Mine Act, but rather the Secretary's interpretation of the Department of Labor's own regulations. This Court affords great deference to an agency's interpretation of its own regulation: under well-recognized precedent, we can reject the Secretary's interpretation only if `it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.' Sec'y of Labor v. Ohio Valley Coal Co., 359 F.3d 531, 534-35 (D.C.Cir.2004) (quoting Akzo Nobel Salt, Inc. v. FMSHRC, 212 F.3d 1301, 1303 (D.C.Cir.2000)). There is no such error or inconsistency in this case. To read the regulation's use of the term occur in a way that precludes coverage of events that have not previously occurred yet promise to occur with regularity in the future would lead to absurd results: it would only require mines to train workers for dangerous tasks that have already been undertaken at least once before in the mine. Given the relative rarity of individual types of accidents in any particular mine, combined with the threat of harm inherent in any single occurrence of these rare accidents, this reading of the statute is hardly reasonable in a statutory regime that declares, first and foremost, that the first priority and concern of all in the coal or other mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource — the miner, and that there is an urgent need to provide more effective means and measures for improving the working conditions and practices in the Nation's coal or other mines in order to prevent death and serious physical harm[.] Mine Act §§ 801(a), (c), codified at 30 U.S.C. § 801. 20 Twentymile's interpretation of the regulation is particularly untenable because it would render the pertinent regulation a nullity. Under that reading of the regulation, the Commission could not require training on the cleaning of the chute until after workers had begun to clean the chute regularly. We cannot take seriously the suggestion that the Commission endorsed a policy promoting that the Twentymile miners attempt work when it is most dangerous: that is, when the miner is utterly ignorant of the task at hand. Such a state of affairs is precisely the situation the Mine Act, and the relevant regulations, have been enacted to guard against. This Court will not adopt an interpretation of a statute or regulation when such an interpretation would render the particular law meaningless. Halverson v. Slater, 129 F.3d 180, 185 (D.C.Cir.1997); AT & T Corp. v. FCC, 394 F.3d 933, 938-39 (D.C.Cir.2005).