Countryside Tree Care contesting woodchipper death fines
GUILDERLAND — Tony Watson, owner of Countryside Tree Care, a local tree-trimming company, is currently contesting the $141,811 in fines brought against him by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Watson did not return repeated calls seeking comment.
Day laborer Justus Booze died May 4 in a woodchipper at a Guilderland job site, on his first day working for Countryside.
OSHA has proposed one “willful” violation and four “serious” violations against the company and has charged that Watson’s failure to train or properly safeguard his employees led to Booze’s preventable death.
The agency cannot comment on an open case, said Amy Phillips of OSHA’s Albany office.
Matt London of the North East New York Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health said, “They (employers) have a certain amount of time to contest it and try to reduce the severity of the violations.”
Employers can argue one of two things: that the charges do not fit the facts of the case, or that the fines are too steep, London explained.
According to the OSHA inspection records, the willful violation alleges that Watson failed to ensure that only trained workers use the chipper and also allowed employees to engage in a variety of unsafe ways of using it, including leaning or reaching into the infeed hopper, pushing small branches in by hand, and standing with their backs to the hopper while manipulating large branches into the machine.
London said that a willful violation — which in Watson’s case accounts for $124,709 of the total fine — is charged in cases in which OSHA officials believe “that they could make the case that, even though these machines are dangerous, there are clear guidelines and ways of working safely with them that, if followed, will pretty much ensure that things like this don’t happen.”
When employers contest, London said, significant fines like those against Watson generally are reduced.
He imagines that Watson’s challenge may be to the amount of the fine.
“From what little I know about the size of his company, this is, I’m sure, a crippling fine,” London said.
