TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – An administrative law judge (ALJ) has dismissed a pattern of violations (POV) notice, relating to mandatory health or safety standards, issued to Patriot Coal’s Brody mine, in Western Virginia, in October last year by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

The federal Mine Safety & Health Review Commission Administrative Law Judge William Moran had on Saturday announced his decision to dismiss the POV notice, ruling that MSHA had failed to meet constitutionally mandated procedural due process requirements by not identifying the specific criteria that constitute a pattern of violations.

"We are pleased that ALJ Moran agreed with Patriot's position and overturned MSHA's POV notice," Patriot executive VP of operations Michael Day said.

As part of the proceedings, Brody challenged the 54 citations and orders identified as the basis of the October 24, 2013, POV notice.

Patriot reported that 26 of those issuances were resolved outside of court.

In his decision, ALJ Moran reduced or vacated another 11 issuances designated as significant and substantial (S&S). In total, 25 of the citations and orders designated by MSHA as S&S in the POV notice were subsequently reduced to non-S&S violations or vacated.

Patriot acquired Brody effective December 31, 2012, and fingered the previous independent owner and operator as being responsible for the previous violations.

Federal mining officials last month cited Patriot Coal for three serious violations they said led to a coal burst that killed two miners at Brody Mine No 1, in May.

The MSHA blamed Patriot for not protecting miners from the hazardous conditions associated with a coal burst, failing to report a similar burst three days earlier and for not preserving the earlier coal burst site as evidence.

In September, the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training (WVOMHST) issued several notices of violation against Patriot for the May 12 coal burst.

Patriot on Tuesday afternoon retorted that it believed both the WVOMHST and MSHA reports had omitted key eyewitness testimony and other evidence from the investigation, and mischaracterised certain accounts of the events leading up to and including the tragic accident.

The Eastern US-focused coal producer, which had late last year emerged from an 18-month-long Chapter 11 reorganisation as a private company, had pointed out that Brody intended to “vigorously challenge” the citations and orders that were issued by both agencies in conjunction with the investigation, saying that Patriot would present its account of the events in the matter “in the appropriate legal forum”.