It's quite a role reversal: The feds are complaining about getting dragged into court, having to file time-consuming paperwork, and generally being treated like any taxpayer who get crosswise with the IRS. What has the feds riled is this: Wal-Mart had spent more than a million dollars fighting a $7,000 fine from OSHA over the clerk trampled in a store's doorway by a mob in 2008, claiming no one could have foreseen the danger at the time, and that it's being punished for violating an arbitrary standard that didn't exist at the time. Ex Post Facto is the lawyerspeak for it.
The federal agency claims its precious time is being eaten up by Wal-Mart's legal maneuvers. Officials at the Department of Labor say that, over the past five months, 17 percent of the available attorney hours in its New York office have been devoted to this one little case, or the equivalent of five full-time lawyers.
Tell us about it. This kind of draining distraction may be new for OSHA, but private employers have to live with the threat of lawsuits every day. |