Purvis Home Improvement workers were back on the job a day after a worker died when he fell from a roof in December 2018 at a home on Munjoy Hill in Portland. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Saco roofer Shawn D. Purvis owes $1.6 million in penalties after a federal administrative judge upheld all of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety charges against him following the death of a worker and a subsequent investigation.
In December 2018, Alan Loignon died after falling from the third floor roof of a Portland building where Purvis’ company operated. OSHA determined that Loignon, Purvis’ half-brother, did not wear a legally required seat belt. Purvis was charged with involuntary manslaughter on the job, but a jury ultimately found him not guilty.
Shawn Purvis is in court in May 2019 during his arraignment in the death of a worker who fell from the roof of a house on Munjoy Hill in December 2018. Jill Brady/staff photographer
Investigators responded to two other complaints later that month and in May 2019 and found that roofers at Purvis’s Old Orchard Beach and Springvale construction sites were also not wearing fall protection gear. Purvis had previously been charged with violating fall protection safety standards.
OSHA has charged Purvis, trading as Purvis Home Improvement Co., with a total of 20 safety violations. OSHA Review Commission Judge Carol A. Baumerich ruled last month that OSHA was correct in citing Purvis despite reducing the total civil fines imposed on him from $1,792,726 to $1,572,340.
At the heart of the case, Baumerich evaluated Purvis’ allegation that the roofers were independent contractors and not his employees and therefore not eligible for OSHA protection. The same argument was put forward in his criminal trial.
“Since the Occupational Health and Safety Act places little emphasis on an employer’s organizational character, it is appropriate to penetrate the corporate veil to achieve the purpose of the Occupational Health and Safety Act,” Baumerich wrote in her ruling. “Purvis has not consistently adhered to the corporate form; Instead, the lines blurred and the company was an extension of the individual rather than a separate entity.”
In a phone interview Wednesday, Purvis claimed that OSHA’s investigations and Baumerich’s decisions were “not based on fact.”
“I want to press charges against the judge because everything she said is a lie,” Purvis said. “You turned the judge against me.”
He plans to appeal the verdict, he added.
“We’re going to appeal and win,” Purvis said. “We were told from the start that we weren’t going to win because the judge would have to side with OSHA and we would have to appeal.”
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