For safety directors, defense counsel, and underwriters

What happens when an operator contests a citation

Every assessed MSHA violation whose contest the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission accepts ends up in a public file that records how the issuance stood when it was contested and what survived. Set the two side by side across every accepted contest on record and one thing stands out: designations come off often. The interesting question is what decides how often.

Across every contest on record

17.7%

of decided significant-and-substantial designations dropped

38.9%

of the proposed penalty gone

242,222

S&S citations decided

Operators proposed-and-decided $1,010,954,812 in penalties through this process and ended up owing $617,336,300. That is $393,618,513 that was proposed and never collected. 20,137 citations carrying $44,802,802 in proposed penalties were decided all the way down to zero.

A dropped S&S designation is not an overturned citation. It means the decision side of MSHA's file no longer records the violation as significant and substantial. Most drops happen in an approved settlement rather than a ruling on the facts, and the penalty does not always follow: it fell on 40,718 of the 42,813, held on 2,070 and rose on 25. What a drop does reach is the operator's pattern-of-violations exposure and what the record says about the mine.

Size does not track with the outcome

The companies with the best contest records are large multinationals, so the natural reading is that contest success is bought: bigger firm, better lawyers, more designations dropped. The record does not show that pattern. Grouping every controller by how many citations it has ever contested, which is the closest thing the public file holds to legal capacity, the drop rate moves across a range of 15.1% to 20.2% and does not climb with size. It peaks in the middle and falls back for the very largest.

Citations the controller has contested	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Penalty cut
1 to 9	5,873	884	15.1%	37.2%
10 to 49	16,709	2,904	17.4%	36.3%
50 to 249	24,936	4,807	19.3%	39.6%
250 to 999	30,945	6,253	20.2%	37.4%
1,000 or more	145,251	26,051	17.9%	35.3%

The share of the proposed penalty that disappears is flatter still: it sits in the same narrow band at every scale, from the smallest operators to the sixty largest.

Where the rates differ most

The rates differ far more across three splits than across company size. The first is what is being mined. A significant-and-substantial designation at a metal or non-metal operation is dropped at a materially higher rate than one at a coal mine, and more of the penalty goes with it. The since 2018 column restates the drop rate on citations issued since January 2018 that have been decided so far.

Commodity (MSHA canvass)	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Since 2018	Penalty cut
Metal / non-metal	65,971	15,084	22.9%	29.1%	42.6%
Coal	176,251	27,751	15.7%	13.6%	37.5%

“Metal and non-metal” is not a thing anyone mines

That two-row table hides more than it shows. Metal and non-metal is MSHA's administrative name for everything that is not coal, and it holds a gold mine and a sand pit in the same number. Split it by what the mine actually produces and the drop rate runs 15.7% to 26.5% — a wider spread inside metal and non-metal than between it and coal. Sand and gravel sits closer to coal than to the metal mines it is filed alongside.

One thing to know about these categories These are MSHA's own five, taken from the canvass it assigns each mine, renamed here for readability and not regrouped. Worth knowing that MSHA files cement and lime under Stone, so that row is all three together rather than quarried stone alone, and cement is the higher of the two. Coal is a single canvass, so its number is the same one in the table above.

What the mine produces	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Penalty cut
Metal ore	12,795	3,393	26.5%	40.8%
Nonmetal minerals	7,810	1,975	25.3%	43.7%
Stone	29,761	7,030	23.6%	43.6%
Sand and gravel	15,605	2,686	17.2%	42.5%
Coal	176,251	27,751	15.7%	37.5%

What is inside the Stone canvass

One of those five rows is not what its name says. MSHA files cement and lime under Stone alongside the quarried stone, and the three do not behave alike. Split out by the SIC code inside that canvass, cement and lime sit well above the stone they are grouped with, and the crushed and dimension stone figure an aggregates operator actually wants is the lowest of the three. These are categories for what an operation produces, not for the kind of site: MSHA classifies more of its lime operations as surface mines than as facilities.

Operation	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Penalty cut
Cement operations	9,240	2,595	28.1%	42.6%
Lime operations	1,317	333	25.3%	40.2%
Crushed and dimension stone, no cement or lime	19,204	4,102	21.4%	44.8%

Aggregates, state by state

Sand, gravel, crushed stone and dimension stone, with cement and lime removed so this counts the same commodity rows the packet does. Together they run 19.5% across 34,809 decided citations. Cut by the state the mine sits in, the drop rate spans 10.7% to 30.3% — a wider gap than the one between coal and metal and non-metal, inside a single industry.

What this table leaves out Listed are the 29 states holding at least 500 decided S&S citations, which is 81% of the aggregates record. The rest of the country falls below that cutoff, the largest of them by seven citations. As with the district table, none of this says a state enforces wrongly: what is mined, how large the operations are and which citations get contested at all differ from state to state. And the state shown is where the mine sits, not where the case was heard.

State	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Penalty cut
Illinois	946	287	30.3%	44.4%
Indiana	791	238	30.1%	46.1%
Missouri	1,249	339	27.1%	50.1%
New Mexico	623	166	26.6%	39.8%
Virginia	647	156	24.1%	48.0%
Kansas	651	155	23.8%	59.0%
Pennsylvania	1,940	453	23.4%	49.6%
Arkansas	567	132	23.3%	43.9%
Wisconsin	621	137	22.1%	44.5%
Florida	906	197	21.7%	46.0%
California	2,007	435	21.7%	46.8%
Arizona	1,338	277	20.7%	38.9%
Nebraska	500	100	20.0%	41.2%
Nevada	608	120	19.7%	41.3%
New York	1,026	201	19.6%	40.4%
Texas	2,369	448	18.9%	40.0%
Alabama	774	141	18.2%	36.2%
North Carolina	860	155	18.0%	50.2%
Oregon	1,325	235	17.7%	43.1%
Iowa	622	109	17.5%	40.8%
Massachusetts	630	110	17.5%	39.2%
Ohio	656	112	17.1%	46.2%
Washington	1,212	196	16.2%	45.7%
Tennessee	1,533	247	16.1%	45.9%
Colorado	1,185	178	15.0%	36.1%
Georgia	708	106	15.0%	49.1%
South Dakota	540	80	14.8%	42.6%
Idaho	608	79	13.0%	49.2%
Kentucky	759	81	10.7%	51.0%

The widest split is which district wrote the citation

The second, and the largest gap anywhere in this file, is the MSHA district the inspector was writing out of. Across the districts with at least a thousand decided S&S citations, the drop rate spans 5.2% to 26.3%. Every metal and non-metal district sits above coal's overall rate, and the two lowest districts in the file are both Kentucky coal districts. Two operators can receive the same designation for the same standard in the same year and carry very different odds into a contest, and the district that issued it is one of the things that differs between them.

Read this one carefully This is not a claim that any district enforces wrongly. Districts differ in what they mine, in how large their operations are, and in which citations get contested in the first place, and the rates already differ by commodity. What the spread establishes is that the same designation does not carry the same expected result everywhere. The district shown is the one that issued the citation, which is not always the district the mine sits in today: MSHA has consolidated districts over this period, and a district marked through a year stopped issuing the citations that reach this file after it. The since 2018 column restates the drop rate on citations issued since January 2018 that have been decided; decisions lag citations, so recent contests still pending are not in it, and a district with fewer than a thousand decided in that window shows a dash. Together the districts above hold 241,629 of the file's 242,222 decided S&S citations; the remaining 593 sit in offices below the thousand-decided floor.

Issuing district	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Since 2018	Penalty cut
Metal and non-metal District 4 (MN and 9 other states)	8,459	2,222	26.3%	30.8%	37.3%
Coal District 2 (PA)	9,788	2,477	25.3%	—	47.7%
Metal and non-metal District 5 (TX and 11 other states)	10,389	2,579	24.8%	23.8%	42.7%
Coal District 9 (UT and 14 other states)	6,240	1,525	24.4%	—	42.5%
Metal and non-metal District 6 (AZ and 16 other states)	11,165	2,536	22.7%	31.2%	43.4%
Metal and non-metal District 2 (PA and 15 other states)	9,155	1,986	21.7%	24.8%	43.3%
Coal District 4 (WV)	40,248	8,662	21.5%	12.9%	34.2%
Metal and non-metal District 7 (CA and 10 other states)	13,444	2,866	21.3%	31.4%	42.4%
Metal and non-metal District 3 (AL and 11 other states)	13,879	2,729	19.7%	22.2%	45.3%
Coal District 12 (WV)	14,296	2,711	19.0%	13.7%	38.0%
Coal District 8 (IL and 3 other states)	13,104	2,362	18.0%	18.1%	44.4%
Coal District 11 (AL), through 2017	6,098	964	15.8%	—	38.0%
Coal District 10 (KY)	14,238	2,183	15.3%	18.9%	37.2%
Coal District 3 (WV)	21,719	2,922	13.5%	9.7%	38.7%
Coal District 5 (VA)	14,979	1,697	11.3%	10.8%	37.2%
Coal District 7 (KY)	21,528	1,669	7.8%	6.3%	32.0%
Coal District 6 (KY), through 2017	12,900	674	5.2%	—	32.9%

And where the case lands

The third is the administrative law judge MSHA names as having made the decision. Across the judges with at least a thousand decided S&S citations, the drop rate spans 11.1% to 24.0% — a wider gap than anything company size produces, and a narrower one than geography.

Read this one carefully This is not a claim that any judge decides cases wrongly, and it is not a ranking. The Commission's rule is that judges are assigned cases in rotation as far as practicable (29 CFR 2700.50), but the dockets still differ in what they hold: coal runs 39.5 to 88.0 percent of the twelve largest against 72.7 percent of all judge-named rows, and the rates differ by commodity, as the two tables above show. What the spread establishes is that the same designation does not carry the same expected result everywhere. Roughly three percent of decided S&S citations carry no judge name in MSHA's file and are absent from this table only.

Judge on the decision	S&S decided	Dropped	Drop rate	Penalty cut
David Simonton	10,373	2,491	24.0%	43.2%
Richard Manning	12,570	2,885	23.0%	44.8%
L Gill	6,594	1,465	22.2%	39.6%
Margaret Miller	16,313	3,403	20.9%	38.5%
John Lewis	12,137	2,482	20.4%	39.4%
Michael Young	2,576	526	20.4%	46.1%
Kenneth Andrews	8,204	1,653	20.1%	36.6%
Priscilla Rae	11,113	2,210	19.9%	39.6%
Janet Harner	7,999	1,558	19.5%	38.7%
George Koutras	2,387	453	19.0%	44.9%
Jeffrey Tureck	1,875	352	18.8%	45.8%
Thomas McCarthy	14,113	2,639	18.7%	41.2%
William Moran	7,808	1,418	18.2%	33.3%
Michael Zielinski	5,240	937	17.9%	49.1%
Alan Paez	14,032	2,494	17.8%	39.8%
Avram Weisberger	6,701	1,183	17.7%	40.5%
Jacqueline Bulluck	15,621	2,716	17.4%	43.1%
David Barbour	10,182	1,734	17.0%	43.5%
Jerold Feldman	12,139	2,067	17.0%	39.5%
John Sullivan	1,853	310	16.7%	44.5%
William Steele	3,281	516	15.7%	35.0%
Gary Melick	7,198	1,125	15.6%	42.5%
T Hodgdon	2,218	264	11.9%	43.2%
Robert Lesnick	38,080	4,220	11.1%	25.0%

Where these numbers come from

MSHA's published contested-violations file, one row per citation and docket, carrying the designation as it stood when the issuance was contested and the one that survived the proceeding. The file holds contested orders as well as citations; this page writes citation for both. The file holds citations issued January 2000 to July 2026. Every figure on this page covers a narrower window than that, because it counts only the S&S citations that have been decided, and a citation issued in the last two years usually has no decision yet. Every figure here counts an S&S citation as decided once the file records a decision date, and as dropped when the decided designation is no longer significant-and-substantial. Penalty comparisons use only citations where both the proposed and the decided amount are present, so a decided figure with no proposal beside it can never inflate a reduction. The file refreshes weekly and these figures move with it.

The one judgement call in every figure above About one decided citation in nine never had its designation adjudicated at all: the docket ended in dismissal, default, withdrawal or vacatur, and MSHA's file records no decided designation for it. Those citations are counted here as not dropped. For a default that is plainly right: the penalty almost always stands. For the withdrawn and vacated, where the penalty went to zero, a reader could fairly count them the other way, which would raise the industry rate from 17.7% to about 20.7%. Dismissals sit between the two: most leave the penalty standing, but 1,215 of the 12,792 of them cut it, 1,142 of those to nothing. Coal stays lowest either way, and the gap between coal and everything else widens rather than narrows, because coal carries fewer unadjudicated dockets than metal and non-metal does; rows sitting within a point or two of each other can swap places under that alternative counting, so read near-ties as ties. Settlements are effectively not in this group: all but one of the settled citations carry a real determination, and that one is a $425 penalty settled to zero at the East Boulder Mine in 2011.

Any single operator's or mine's own contest record sits on its page in this database, with this same industry figure printed beside it for comparison.

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