Lawrence Halprin joined Keller and Heckman in 1978.
Lawrence Halprin is nationally recognized for his work in the areas of occupational safety and health, and chemical regulation, at the federal and state levels. His occupational safety and health practice covers all aspects of legal advocacy, including: legislative reform and oversight; participation in OSHA, NIOSH and MSHA rulemakings and stakeholders processes; participation in the development of national consensus standards under the ANSI process, and TLVs under the ACGIH process; bringing and intervening in pre-enforcement challenges to final OSHA rules; providing compliance counseling and training; conducting incident investigations, compliance audits and program reviews; representing clients in OSHA investigations; and defending clients in OSHA and MSHA enforcement actions.
Mr. Halprin's engineering background and historical knowledge of OSHA rulemakings have greatly enhanced his ability to provide compliance counseling and represent clients in OSHA and MSHA enforcement actions. He has extensive experience with federal and state OSHA investigations and enforcement actions involving: chemical emergency response, chemical process safety management, chemical hazard communication, combustible dust, confined spaces, electrical safety, the General Duty Clause, (Cal-OSHA) injury and illness prevention programs, injury and illness recordkeeping, lockout/tagout, machine guarding, noise, powered industrial trucks, respiratory protection, and alleged employer retaliation claims.
Mr. Halprin's engineering background and financial background have been particularly useful in evaluating and critiquing OSHA and MSHA rulemaking proposals and suggesting alternative approaches. On behalf of one or more clients, Mr. Halprin has participated in almost every major OSHA rulemaking initiative over the past 25 years and numerous Cal-OSHA rulemakings.
Mr. Halprin has a hands-on familiarity with the manufacturing environment and has represented clients in the aerospace, chemical, construction, electronics, food, machinery, paper and forest products, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, plastics, steel, telecommunications and transportation industries. He is a member of the following ANSI and ASTM technical committees: ANSI B11.19 Subcommittee on Performance Standards for Safeguarding, the ANSI/PMMI B155.1 Committee on Safety Requirements for Packaging Machinery and Packaging-Related Converting Machinery; ASTM Committee E34 on Occupational Health and Safety; and ASTM Committee E56 on Nanotechnology. He regularly follows and participates in the development of combustible dust standards by NFPA.
In addition to his work in the area of occupational safety and health, Mr. Halprin also counsels individual companies and trade associations regarding a broad range of chemical management activities and requirements under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau (formerly BATF, covering the permitting, registration and operation of facilities that manufacture, process, store and distribute ethanol), the Environmental Protection Agency (asbestos rules and Risk Management Program rule), the Department of Transportation, the Chemical Safety Board, and their state counterparts. He also works with clients in developing, implementing and auditing environmental, health and safety, and product stewardship management programs. Mr. Halprin has been a strong advocate of measures to enhance the effectiveness of regulatory agencies. He has testified before Congress and participated in numerous government rulemakings in an effort to ensure that the scope and requirements of agency rules reflect what is necessary, practical and justified by appropriate risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses. Mr. Halprin is a frequent writer and speaker on a broad range of environmental, health and safety management issues.
In his transactional practice, Mr. Halprin has provided counsel and negotiated: waste management agreements; purchase, leasing and financing agreements for commercial properties, drilling equipment and computer systems; and telecommunications system design, construction and operating agreements. Before joining Keller and Heckman, Mr. Halprin clerked for the Honorable Charles R. Johnston of the U.S. Tax Court.
Enforcement Actions with Widespread Impact, Agency Rulemakings and Pre-Enforcement Court Challenges
Mr. Halprin has represented clients in a significant number of OSHA enforcement actions having widespread application across an entire industry and, in some cases, the entire manufacturing sector or the entire industrial sector (outside of mining). He has participated in almost every major OSHA rulemaking initiative over the past 25 years and numerous Cal-OSHA rulemakings. He also participated in numerous court challenges to final OSHA rules – on behalf of petitioners challenging rules that our clients concluded were not reasonably necessary or appropriate to workplace safety and health, and on behalf of intervenors to protect final rules against efforts to make them more burdensome. Some of these representations are summarized below.
- Co-counsel and primary author of the comments for the primary industry coalition (led by the National Association of Manufacturers) challenging OSHA's proposed October 19, 2010 re-interpretation of the OSHA Noise Standard.
- Co-counsel and primary author of the comments for the primary industry coalition (led by the US Chamber of Commerce) challenging OSHA's proposed January 29, 2010 addition of a musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) column to the OSHA Injury And Illness Recordkeeping Rule.
- Primary author of the comments submitted on behalf of the Grocery Manufacturers Association in the Cal-OSHA Diacetyl Rulemaking to preserve the exemption for flavors containing less than 1% diacetyl
- Lead counsel for the successful intervention on behalf of the Aerospace Industries Association to preserve the Separate Engineering Control Airborne Limits (SECAL), permissible exposure limit (PEL) and action level (AL) of OSHA's Hexavalent Chromium Standard against the challenge brought by Public Citizen. Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Dept. of Labor, 557 F.3d 165 (3d Cir. 2009).
- Author of the comments submitted to the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) that apparently persuaded the CSB to conclude that it did not have the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to adopt the proposed "Accident Investigation Initiation Notice and Order to Preserve Evidence [Rule]," which was published in the Federal Register on January 4, 2006 (71 FR 309).
- As lead counsel, on behalf of the American Forest & Paper Association, negotiated an unprecedented compliance instruction (effectively a generic variance) from OSHA in connection with the design, operation and maintenance of chemical batch digesters -- a type of pressure vessel in wide use within the paper industry to convert wood chips into pulp. See OSHA Directive CPL 02-01-041, EFFECTIVE DATE: 9-16-04, SUBJECT: Alternative Abatement Method for 29 CFR 1910.261(g)(17) – Over-pressure Protection for Batch Digesters Used in the Pulp Processing Industry. OSHA vacated citations against four mills that were determined to be in compliance with the alternative abatement method established by this directive.
- Primary author of the 2003 comments submitted on behalf of the primary construction coalition in the Small Business Review of OSHA's draft comprehensive standard for occupational exposure to crystalline silica under SBREFA. SBREFA Final Report issued December 19, 2003, extensively quoted coalition comments.
- Co-counsel for the leading industry coalition (led by the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce), several major trade associations, and several major corporations in the OSHA Ergonomics Program Standard Rulemaking and the successful effort before Congress to rescind OSHA's ill-advised Ergonomics Program Standard in 2001.
- Lead counsel in a case resulting in a 1995 OSHA Letter of Interpretation and settlement acknowledging that employers may inspect representative authorized employees (and are not required to inspect every authorized employee) applying lockout/tagout on an annual basis, and may inspect representative applications of lockout/tagout (and are not required to inspect the application of lockout/tagout to every piece of annually serviced equipment) on an annual basis.
- Lead counsel for the successful challenge to the 1994 amendments to the OSHA Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Standards brought on behalf of the American Forest & Paper Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute, resulting in a settlement that limited the scope of the employers' obligations under that rule to what OSHA had demonstrated to be reasonably necessary and appropriate.
- Co-counsel in the successful intervention on behalf of Chocolate Manufacturers Association and National Confectioners Association to preserve the minor servicing provisions of the OSHA Lock-Out/Tag-Out Standard against union challenges International union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, UAW v. OSHA, 938 F.2d 1310 (D.C. Cir. 1991).