U.S. District Court Rejects Efforts to Overturn OSH Case by Employer
The U.S. District Court has rejected the notion that a ruling in 2022 be overturned by the Defendants in a workplace safety case.
Where a jury found that the employer company and the supervisor (Defendants) violated the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) by retaliating against an employee (Plaintiff) after he suffered a workplace injury, that verdict should not be overturned despite the employer’s argument that (1) there is insufficient evidence to establish that the employee engaged in protected conduct; (2) the verdict resulted from prejudicial errors in the jury instructions; and (3) the exclusion of certain evidence relating to the employee’s arrest record was prejudicial.
On June 21, 2022, the jury found that the Defendants violated the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Now, the Defendants seek to overturn this verdict.
The Defendants present three reasons for overturning the jury’s verdict. First, they argue that there is insufficient evidence to support the conclusion that the Defendants engaged in unlawful retaliation in violation of Section 11(c) of the OSH Act. … Second, the Defendants contend that the jury’s verdict resulted from prejudicial errors in the instructions the Court gave the jury. … Third, the Defendants claim that the Court’s exclusion of certain evidence relating to the Plaintiff’s arrest record was prejudicial.
The Court already explained, in a sealed decision, why it would not allow all the evidence that the Defendants sought to admit. While the Court would not allow particular details of prior arrests into evidence for a variety of reasons, it did allow general references to the Plaintiff’s arrest record.…that logic still applies. The Defendants maintain that the ‘nature of the arrests … was why law enforcement needed so badly to detain Plaintiff,’ and therefore its exclusion was prejudicial. … But the motivation behind law enforcement’s actions were not at issue at trial — the Defendants’ action was. Moreover, while the Defendants cursorily suggest that the excluded evidence was relevant to ‘why the supervisor did what he did,’ Defendants elicited no such testimony from the supervisor even when they had the opportunity to do so during trial. The supervisor was free to testify that Plaintiff’s arrest record affected his decision to facilitate Plaintiff’s May 2017 arrest. He did not.
If your business has any questions on this topic or any other matters, please do not hesitate to contact the attorneys at The Royal Law Firm at 413-586-2288.
