Brody Mining ‘pattern of violations’ notice thrown out

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Brody Mining ‘pattern of violations’ notice thrown out

Monday, November 3, 2014
By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer

A federal administrative law judge has thrown out a U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration notice that cited Patriot Coal’s Brody Mining subsidiary for a “pattern of violations” under the agency’s tougher new rule issued after the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster.

Judge William B. Moran of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission compared MSHA’s process for making pattern of violation determinations to an “unfair card game,” and said agency officials, acting on behalf of U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez, had not adequately defined exactly what actions by a mining operator constitute such a pattern.

“Not only does the secretary’s elaborate and lengthy regulation, involving a pattern notice, fail to identify what constitutes a pattern, even after the pattern notice was issued and the litigation challenging that notice instituted, the secretary still did not identify, beyond general and vague statements, the basis for his pattern claim,” Moran wrote in a 110-page decision dated Nov. 1.

The decision, which can be appealed, comes after separate federal and state reports cited Brody Mining for serious violations in the May deaths of two miners at the company’s Brody Mine No. 1 mine in Boone County. St. Louis-based Patriot has said it will fight those state and federal violations.
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Reach Ken Ward Jr. at [e-mail], 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.