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Practice Areas :
Health and Safety Law – OSHA/ MSHA/ NIOSH
Patton Boggs boasts one of the nation’s pre-eminent health and safety law practices, providing clients with strategic advice that allows them to achieve their most vital goals. We educate our clients on the laws, regulations, agencies, and institutions aimed at preventing workplace and community injuries, illness, and environmental damage. By doing so, we help them to increase their company value and respond successfully to challenges in this complex field.
While we emphasize risk reduction services, including management training, hazard warnings, audits, and risk transfer programs, we also are unsurpassed in providing the emergency response counsel that is essential to crisis survival and financial risk management.
In addition, we offer integrated advice which considers a client’s legal duties and which utilizes our exceptional knowledge of investigations and the impact of these investigations on risks related to insurance coverage; civil and criminal enforcement; and customer, workforce, community, and media relations. Drawing from our successful careers in defending high-profile disasters, accident investigations, toxic tort, and adverse health-effect claims, we pioneered and continue to lead the field in strategic risk reduction services.
Patton Boggs also maintains long-term relationships with political and agency leaders, as well as world-renowned scientific, engineering, and technical experts. With the assistance of these foremost authorities and the commitment of our clients, we have achieved an international reputation for success. We provide first-rate government and private standard-setting representation, and, when needed, litigation and lobbying to successfully protect our clients’ interests as they are affected by regulations, rules, and laws.
The firm’s health and safety team includes lawyers in all of our U.S. offices, and we interact frequently with our peers in law firms in Europe and Asia. We work closely with Washington DC and regional government offices of the departments and agencies engaged in safety, health, and environmental activities, such as MSHA, OSHA, NIOSH, EPA, CPSC, ATF, FAA, DOE, NTSB, and the Chemical Safety Board. The following are examples of some of the risk reduction and liability prevention services that we provide :
- Program development and reviews
- Management training for inspections and investigations
- Audits of compliance, record keeping, and training
- Acquisition due diligence on compliance and risks
- Regulatory variance counseling and advocacy
- Contractor/Subcontractor risk management programs, contracts, and counsel
- Enforcement counseling, negotiation, settlement, and litigation
- Crisis management and on-site disaster and accident counsel
- Liability and insurance coverage analysis and response
- Internal investigations
- Expert selection, retention, and management
- Litigation, arbitration, and mediation
- Authoritative counsel for health effects litigation prevention and defense
- Informal agency settlement representation
- Agency rulemaking counseling, advocacy, and litigation
- Private standard-setting counsel and litigation
- Scientific research counsel
- Product stewardship, hazard warning, and liability counseling and litigation defense
- Congressional hearings, appropriations, and legislation counsel
- “Whistleblower” and discrimination law counseling and litigation
- White-collar criminal defense
Representative Matters:
- Provided counsel on emerging liability issues regarding ergonomics, silica, and diesel exhaust, vibration, and a variety of chemicals, including rulemaking participation, Congressional actions, research coordination, litigation assistance, and expert retention. Provided insurance coverage, recovery counsel, and contract provision drafting and implementation assistance to enhance risk reduction efforts on these emerging risks.
- Provided crisis management and investigated/defended fatal accidents, explosions, fires, and chemical spills at mines, quarries, cement plants, chemical plants, refineries, manufacturing plants, communication facilities, and other locations in the transportation and service industries; in all cases, prevented or minimized enforcement actions, secured insurance coverage, and established defenses to reduce or transfer liability risks.
- Provided counsel to more than 100 of the Fortune 500 companies on environmental, health, and safety matters, including OSHA, MSHA, NIOSH, CPSC, EPA, DOT, and ATF regulatory issues, claims, inspection and investigation advice, informal penalty settlements, and program/policy reviews.
- Trained thousands of corporate personnel, facility, plant, mine, and quarry management on handling regulatory inspections, participating in accident investigations, and formulating liability risk reduction strategies.
- Investigated, defended, and obtained dismissal of safety whistleblower/discrimination cases, including providing emergency response when needed.
- Successfully defended enforcement actions in every state, brought by every major federal agency.
- Successfully defended corporate and individual clients against investigations and charges of regulatory criminal violations.
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