In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and President Nixon signed it into law that December, creating OSHA with a straightforward but ambitious mandate: to assure safe and healthful working conditions for America’s workers.
The results over the following decades were significant. Workplace fatalities have fallen dramatically since 1970, even as the American workforce has more than doubled. Workplace injury and illness rates have also declined. OSHA became one of the country’s most consequential worker-protection agencies.
But government regulation, even when it works as intended, has limits. Agencies can investigate hazards, establish safety standards, order recalls, issue citations, and impose penalties. What they generally cannot do is make an injured person whole.
That is where plaintiffs’ attorneys play a different—and increasingly important—role, particularly as federal oversight diminishes.
Civil litigation can uncover information that would otherwise remain behind closed doors, establish who knew what and when, expose repeated failures, and create financial consequences when unsafe practices injure workers or consumers. Most importantly, it may be the only avenue through which an injured person or grieving family can seek compensation for medical expenses, lost income, long-term care, and the human cost of what happened.
Two recent stories illustrate why both public regulation and private litigation matter.
Lettuce Explain: This Summer’s Outbreak, Unpacked. This summer, federal and state health officials investigated an extraordinary rise in Cyclospora infections across the country. One significant multistate outbreak was traced to processed iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico. The FDA’s traceback investigation identified the supplier, and the company voluntarily removed affected lettuce from the market and initiated a recall.
That public-health response was essential. It identified the contaminated product, warned consumers, and helped prevent additional illnesses.
But a recall does not pay the medical bills of someone who became seriously ill. An FDA investigation does not replace lost wages or compensate a family for lasting injury or death. For those individuals, a lawsuit may be the only available mechanism to determine responsibility and obtain meaningful financial relief.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys do not replace the FDA or CDC. They perform a function those agencies were not designed to perform: representing the individual people who suffered the consequences.
Football and “workplace safety”. A new study published in The BMJ found that at least 24.5% of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had confirmed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. That is the study’s most conservative estimate. Among the former players whose brains were donated and examined, more than 91% were found to have CTE. The percentage of former NFL players with CTE is almost certainly much higher than 24.5
Former OSHA officials commenting on the findings described the numbers as “astoundingly high” and unlike the occupational risks ordinarily seen in other industries. Yet professional football has largely remained outside OSHA’s traditional enforcement activity, leaving players with no regulatory system comparable to those protecting workers from many other occupational hazards.
The most meaningful financial protection achieved for former players came through civil litigation. Lawsuits brought on behalf of retired players ultimately produced the NFL concussion settlement, which established a compensation program for certain qualifying neurological conditions. The Settlement, however, generally covers only players who retired before it became it effective in 2017 and does not currently compensate players for CTE. Even with those significant limitations, as of August 31, 2026, the program had approved more than $1.7 billion in payable monetary awards.
The settlement is imperfect, and it does not protect everyone. It generally covers retired players, not the current players who continue to absorb repetitive head impacts today. But without plaintiffs’ attorneys bringing the litigation, developing the evidence, and forcing the issue into court, even that compensation system would not exist.
That is the larger point.
Government agencies and plaintiffs’ attorneys are not interchangeable, and this should not be framed as a competition between them. Regulators protect the public prospectively by setting standards, investigating hazards, and attempting to prevent the next injury. Plaintiffs’ attorneys act when prevention has failed, and someone has already paid the price.
They give injured people a voice in a system they could rarely navigate alone. They use litigation and discovery to uncover facts, hold powerful institutions accountable, and seek compensation that regulators generally cannot provide.
As regulatory protections face limited resources, jurisdictional gaps, and changing enforcement priorities, that role becomes even more critical. When the government cannot—or does not—provide a complete remedy, the civil justice system may be the only place left for an injured person to turn.
The work of plaintiffs’ attorneys has rarely been more important.
