President Bush Designates Horace A. Thompson, III, Chairman of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission

On June 20, ­2007, the President designated Horace A. “Topper” Thompson, III to serve as Chairman of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent Federal adjudicatory agency created to decide contests of citations resulting from OSHA inspections of American work places. 

Prior to joining the Commission in June of last year, Thompson, a life-long resident of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, lived with his wife Susan in Pass Christian, Mississippi. During his entire 38-year career as an attorney, he concentrated his practice in labor and employment law, with a focus on occupational safety and health law.

“I am honored that President Bush has bestowed the confidence in me to handle the day-to-day operations of an agency responsible for rendering decisions important to safety and health issues in the workplace.  I look forward to working with Commissioner Rogers in an effort to finalize pending cases expeditiously,” said Thompson. 

From 2002 through 2006, Thompson served as Co-Chair of the Labor and Employment Law Practice Group of the Law Firm of Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis and held a resident position in the firm’s Gulfport, MS and New Orleans, LA offices.

Prior to that, he co-founded the New Orleans based Labor Relations and Employment Law Firm of McCalla Thompson Pyburn & Ridley and from 1980 through 2002 participated as a member of its management committee. From 1968 to 1980, Thompson was a member of the Labor Law Section of the New Orleans based law firm of Jones Walker Waechter Poitevent Carrere & Denegre.

Thompson received his JD from Tulane University in 1968, and before that studied undergraduate engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He co-edited the ABA Treatise on OSHA Law (BNA, 1983) and in each year of its publication contributed to the ABA/BNA Treatise on International Labor Law. From 1979 to 1984, he served as Management Co-Chair of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Committee American Bar Section on Labor and Employment Law.