Court questions OSHA’s view on meaning of ‘work-related’ injury

A federal appeals court decision has pushed back against what appears to be an attempt by OSHA to expand the definition of a “work-related” injury.

The case involved an OSHA citation against Caterpillar Logistics Services for allegedly failing to record an ergonomic injury on its OSHA log. The employee involved was diagnosed with an elbow condition after working five weeks in the company’s packing department.

However an internal review panel concluded that repetitive motion on the job was not the only cause of the injury and the company decided not to post the injury on its OSHA log.

OSHA said, however, that the injury was work-related and cited the company failing to record the injury. An administrative law judge who upheld OSHA’s determination concluded that “an employee’s work activities do not have to be the cause, but rather a cause of an injury or illness” to be recordable.

The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, overturned that determination. The Court criticized the administrative law judge for basing his decision on the sole physician to testify in support of OSHA’s position and ignoring the “strong indications that [his] favored witness got things wrong.” The Court discounted OSHA’s physician’s testimony because he failed to explain why, if the work activities in the packing department contribute to the elbow injury, no other worker in the company’s 10 years of operations had contracted this same condition.

According to an analysis of the case by the EpsteinBeckerGreen law firm “because of the Caterpillar Logistics case, it remains unsettled whether an employee’s job duties must be the cause of an injury or illness or a cause to constitute work-relatedness.”

Subscribe to Jim Stanley’s OSHA blog and receives updates via email or on your reader.