Review commission vacates citations on fatal fall

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission on Tuesday vacated two citations against an Ohio construction company following the fatal fall of a man helping replace a roof, ruling that the man was not an employee of the company at the time of the accident.

In Secretary of Labor v. Warzala Construction, the commission found that while Scott Stone sometimes worked for Warzala Construction he was not working on one of the company’s projects when he fell 30 feet to his death in Warren, Ohio, in 2018 and that he was working for another contractor, according to documents filed in Washington, D.C.

The company, following Mr. Stone’s death and obituary that named Warzala Construction as his employer, faced an inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA eventually cited Warzala for failing to provide fall protection and for failing to notify federal regulators of the workplace fatality within eight hours as required by law.

Warzala contested, arguing in part that Mr. Stone was working on a job the company did not oversee at the time and that he was an independent contractor. The review commission agreed, writing that “Warzala had no further involvement in the project” despite that it had initially been contracted for the job, but passed it on to another company and that it did not retain “any supervision over Stone on the day-to-day of the project.”

“Thus, Warzala retained no ‘right to control the manner and means by which the… roofing job was accomplished.’ This finding heavily weighs in favor of finding Stone was not Warzala’s employee,” the ruling states.