Criminal indictments arise from grain mill explosion

We have warned for several years of federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigations potentially resulting in criminal exposure for employers who are claimed to have willfully violated workplace health and safety standards. Now, a federal grand jury has indicted the operator and management personnel of a Wisconsin corn mill where a May 2017 explosion killed five workers and injured many more. The indictments include two counts relating to willful violations of OSHA grain-handling standards.

In particular, the grand jury charged the managers with document falsifications prior to and obstruction of the OSHA investigation of the incident, including:

• Conspiracy to commit fraud by taking deceptive measures to conceal the failure to adhere to food safety procedures.
• Conspiracy to conceal standards violations and unsafe conditions from auditors and government agencies.
• Obstruction of justice by providing false and misleading testimony to OSHA about managerial knowledge of combustible dust hazards.

The cautionary tale is plain—the cover-up is usually worse than the offense itself. Employers and facility owners and operators with responsibility for OSHA compliance must ensure they (1) have appropriate written policies and procedures in place to identify and reduce, eliminate and/or meaningfully address workplace hazards; (2) ensure workers are adequately and routinely trained concerning those hazards and their avoidance, as well as safe work practices for the various tasks in which they must engage; (3) conduct attorney-directed internal investigations of OSHA-reportable incidents to ensure work product protection applies to the conduct of those efforts and (4) engage forthrightly with OSHA when incidents occur that could subject the company to citations.