In 2011, a judge ruled that Wal-Mart should pay a $7,000 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fine in connection with the trampling death of an employee at its Valley Stream, NY store during a Black Friday sale in 2008. Wal-Mart appealed the ruling, and according to the New York Times, has already spent $2 Million fighting the fine.
OSHA currently doesn’t have specific regulations that pertain to crowd control in retail stores, so it used its general duty clause (GDC) to cite Wal-Mart with a serious infraction. OSHA claims that Wal-Mart should have foreseen that the situation at the store could lead to employee injuries or death and should have taken steps to protect its workers. The GDC specifies that employers should provide a workplace “free from recognized hazards.”
Wal-Mart contends that it could not have foreseen the tragedy and that there were no federal regulations or guidelines in place that dealt with crowd control or a potential trampling death.
Wal-Mart says that there are larger issues at stake and believes that paying the citation could lead to the creation of “unfairly harsh penalties and restrictions on future sales promotions.” The corporate giant thinks that OSHA’s use of the GDC in this instance was unconstitutional.
In this high-stakes game of legal wrangling, Wal-Mart isn’t the only institution that stands to lose. OSHA legal staffers have put 4,725 hours of work into the case. Experts say that if OSHA loses, it could severely limit its abilities to use the GDC.
If you’ve been injured on the job, you may be facing an employer that has unlimited resources to fight your claims. The work injury attorneys in Florida at Farah & Farah aren’t afraid to fight large corporations to get you the compensation you are entitled to. You don’t have to stand alone in defending your legal rights. If you have a question concerning your workplace injury or worker’s compensation, call us at (800) 533-3555 or Contact Us online for a complimentary consultation.
