A New York roofing company that was cited for egregious willful and other violations and issued a $687,536 penalty over a workplace death has dropped its contest of the citation, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Thursday.
Nanuet-based ALJ Home Improvement filed a notice of withdraw with the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission a week before it was scheduled for trial in a case that began when a worker fatally fell during a roofing job in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, in August 2022.
The review commission affirmed OSHA’s three per-instance egregious willful fall protection violations, four serious violations and a willful unsafe ladder violation, as well as the full proposed penalties.
The company’s founder, Jose Lema, pleaded guilty in February to criminal charges stemming from the workplace death and is scheduled to be sentenced in May in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to OSHA.
OSHA inspected ALJ Home Improvement 10 times since 2019 and issued multiple past citations relating to fatal falls, the agency said.