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The decision to stop fighting the fines and penalties came roughly a week before ALJ Home Improvement of Rockland County was to go to trial against the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration over conditions at a job site in Ho-Ho-Kus (see photo above).
It also comes two months before Jose Lema, ALJ's founder and principal, is due to be sentenced in federal court for the February 2022 death of an employee at a construction site in the Rockland County village of New Square.
The history of Lema's Nanuet-based company includes the death of another employee who slipped and fell 35 feet from the roof of a newly-built three-story home in the Hudson Valley's Kiamesha Lake on a cold, snowy day in February 2019.
ALJ had been in business nine months when the young worker died. He wasn't wearing a safety harness and hadn't been trained in preventing falls, authorities said at the time.
Even after promising to make things safer, Lema failed to protect his workers, OSHA charged.
Subsequent violations were found at a re-roofing job in Edison and a condominium development in Suffern, OSHA reported. ALJ agreed to pay the penalties in both instances, the agency said.
One of a number of workers not wearing property harnesses ast the Suffern job site was the man who later fell to his death in New Square, OSHA reported.
The New Square victim wore a safety harness but had no lanyard, rope, or other attachment to a D-ring that would have tethered him to the roof, investigators said.
From 2019 to 2023, eight investigations of ALJ's work sites produced more than three dozen citations and over $2.3 million in penalties, OSHA noted.
This includes the $687,536 in fines and penalties for failing to provide steep-slope roofing protection at home being built on Warren Avenue in Ho-Ho-Kus in 2022, six months after the New Square tragedy.
An OSHA officer who visited the Ho-Ho-Kus site, roughly six miles from the state line, reported finding three ALJ workers 18 feet up in safety harnesses that weren't secured to the roof -- even with Lema at the job.
Under OSHA regulations, workers at residential construction projects more than six feet high must be protected from falls. That ordinarily involves harnesses tethered by rope to anchor plates or brackets clipped to the roof.
Overloaded and misused ladders also put workers at the Ho-Ho-Kus site at risk of falling nearly two stories without head protection, among other violations, OSHA contended.
ALJ -- which operates in Bergen and four New York counties: Rockland, Orange, Westchester and Dutchess -- initially fought the sanctions.
However, Jeffrey S. Rogoff, regional OSHA director in New York, said a "strong litigation strategy" eventually ended the company's "attempt to contest [our] findings."
"By affirming our investigative findings and upholding ALJ Home Improvement's penalties, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has sent a clear message to employers whose egregious actions show continuous disregard for worker safety," added OSHA Area Director Lisa Levy in Hasbrouck Heights. "The message is simple: we will hold you accountable for deliberately putting workers at risk."
Lema -- also known as Jose Lema Mizhirumbay -- was arrested at his Nanuet home last July to face criminal charges in connection with the workplace death in New Square.
Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Lema "endangered the safety of his workers by disregarding regulations and failing to ensure his employees used fall protection systems."
Rather than risk the potential consequences of a conviction in a federal trial, Lema pleaded guilty in February to willfully violating OSHA safety regulations.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in White Plains, NY, on May 22.
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