Margo Lopez is a long time workplace safety lawyer representing mining companies in the coal, metal, stone, sand and gravel industries. She is a highly successful litigator and regularly presents company and industry cases before Administrative Law Judges, Federal Review Commissions and the United States Courts of Appeals. In a high profile Court of Appeals case, Margo effectively saved the mining industry from severe limitations on its rights to manage its workforce, involving potentially millions of dollars, by successfully arguing that temporary reinstatement of miners in discrimination cases must end when MSHA decides not to take the case.
Margo represents mine operators in federal investigations and cases arising out of mine incidents and agency enforcement actions under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act. She has been lead counsel in the aftermath of serious mine accidents and she represents companies and witnesses in MSHA special investigations and safety discrimination cases. She also has represented companies in investigations and litigation involving the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
She has extensive experience in assisting manufacturers of safety equipment in MSHA and NIOSH product certification investigations and related litigation. She also assists companies and trade associations with response to agency policies and rulemakings, including cases in federal court challenging agency rules and MSHA/OSHA jurisdiction decisions.
Margo also has been advising trade associations, charities and professional societies for more than 20 years. She regularly assists with organizational governance matters, including drafting and interpretation of bylaws and other governance documents. She drafts and reviews all manner of business contracts for associations, including employment contracts, supplier contracts, joint venture arrangements, information technology and software development contracts, publishing contracts, meetings contracts, business leases, office leases, licenses and other general business agreements. She advises scientific and professional organizations on publishing ethics and other membership ethics matters, including drafting ethics codes, policies and procedures and counseling on ethical code compliance matters. She also assists associations with trademark and copyright, government relations, antitrust, and a wide variety of other tax exempt organization matters.
She took principal responsibility for editing Ogletree Deakins authors’ chapters for the 2008 edition of Occupational Safety and Health Law Manual (Government Institutes), and, herself, is the author of chapters in that volume as well as articles in multiple safety industry publications. Margo is a frequent speaker on safety law topics and she provides training for companies on responding to safety and health law enforcement.
A graduate with Distinction from the University of Virginia, Margo received her law degree with Honors from George Washington University where she was an Editor of The George Washington Journal of International Law and Economics. She has a Masters degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.
