OSHA recovered payment of $442,000 in penalties and interest from Washington Township, N.J.-based construction company Altor and its president Vasilios Saites. The collection comes after years-long efforts by OSHA to collect unpaid penalties for safety violations, including multiple willful violations of OSHA’s fall protection standards.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Pa., issued a decision in July 2019 finding Altor and Saites in contempt for failing to pay $412,000 in OSHA penalties, according to an agency news release. After the contempt finding, Altor and Saites agreed to pay the penalty in full, plus $30,000 in post-judgment interest.
The repayment resolves a lengthy litigation process between Altor, Saites, and OSHA. The litigation included multiple hearings before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) and the Court of Appeals. OSHA’s Hasbrouck Heights area office initially cited Altor in 1998 after an investigation identified numerous safety violations at an Edgewater, N.J., construction site, including multiple willful violations of fall protection standards.
“This successful outcome demonstrates that the U.S. Department of Labor will use all appropriate and available legal tools to ensure that employers do not evade accountability for failing to comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” said regional solicitor of labor Jeffrey Rogoff, in New York. “Our collaborative efforts in this case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordan Anger, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of New Jersey, help ensure that workplaces are safe and that employers who violate the law do not gain an unfair economic advantage over law-abiding competitors.”