December 2025 – The MSHA Defense Report

All of us here at Conn Maciel Carey wish you a joyful and safe holiday season!

Please enjoy this holiday greeting from the CMC family to your family:

We have so much to be thankful for at Conn Maciel Carey, but most of all, we thank you all for continuing to turn to us for counsel and legal services. Please contact us if you have questions about any of the topics we have covered here on the MSHA Defense Report blog, or if you have ideas for other subjects we should be covering. And of course, contact any of us if there is ever anything our national MSHA & Workplace Safety Practice Group at Conn Maciel Carey can do to help your organization with workplace safety law issues.

After more than four decades shaping and defending California workplace safety law, legendary Cal/OSHA attorney Fred Walter is retiring and closing a chapter on a career that helped define an entire practice area.

In a recent Cal-OSHA Reporter feature, Fred reflects on his path into Cal/OSHA defense, which began in the late 1970s in personal injury litigation before a pivotal meeting with Robert “Bob” Peterson, widely regarded as the godfather of the Cal/OSHA defense bar. As the first Chief Counsel for the Cal/OSHA Appeals Board, Peterson pioneered what was then an emerging specialty. Fred followed soon after, becoming only the second attorney to focus full-time on Cal/OSHA defense – a role he would hold for the next 45 years.