ALJ Decision in 84 Lumber Company, dba 84 Lumber Company, a Limited Partnership, OSHRC Docket No. 20-0876, Becomes a Final Order of the Commission.

This proceeding is before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (Commission) under section 10(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 29 U.S.C. § 651 et seq. (Act). Respondent, 84 Lumber Company (84 Lumber), is a purveyor of construction and building materials, primarily lumber. (Tr. 76-79). In November of 2019, an 84 Lumber employee was using a forklift to load bundles of wood onto the bed of a semi-truck owned and operated by BLS Trucking (BLS), a company with which Respondent contracted to deliver its customers’ orders to their respective jobsites. (Tr. 79-80, 272-73). The driver of the truck, a BLS employee, asked the forklift operator to rearrange a particular bundle of wood on the bed of the truck’s trailer. (Stipulation 7, Tr. 228-29). As the forklift operator was in the process of fulfilling this request and had the bundle of wood suspended in the air, the BLS driver unexpectedly ran under the suspended load on the forklift. (Tr. 229-30, 252-53). The bundle thereafter became unstable and fell onto the BLS employee, killing him. (Stipulation 4).