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Mandatory New Civil Penalties (This information was provided by Legal Publications Services, Ellen Smith, Publisher.)
I had asked Ed Clair, of the Solicitor's Office, to answer a question I had regarding the new civil penalties, and if the new civil penalty provisions for Significant and Substantial (S&S) and and Unwarrantable failure would be mandatory, or would ALJs still have the power to lower penalties based on the six civil penalty criteria listed in the 1977 Mine Act.
Clair said, "We read the minimum penalty
provision as being mandatory and binding on both the Secretary
and the Commission because when there is a specific provision
and a general provision, the general one cannot override the
specific one. In this situation, the six statutory criteria will
still be used to assess penalties, but they cannot be used to
assess a penalty less than the statutory minimum which
applies to certain types of violations."
So, the following violations will have mandatory
penalties:
> A
mine operator who does not report an accident to MSHA (which has
a reasonable potential to cause death) within 15 minutes shall
be assessed a civil penalty of not less than $5,000 and up to
$60,000.
>
The minimum penalty for
any
S&S citation or order will be $2,000.
>
The minimum penalty for an unwarrantable failure will be $4,000.
( 6/10/06- Ed Clair of the Solicitor's office pointed out that there is an error in the update on minimum penalties that should be corrected immediately. Section 8 of the MINER bill will require a minimum penalty of $2,000 for unwarrantable failure citations and orders issued under section 104(d)(1) and a minimum penalty of $4,000 for unwarrantable failure orders issued under section 104(d)(2). There is no minimum penalty for S&S violations that are not also the result of an unwarrantable failure to comply.)
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