Helen Mining v. Elliott — administrative — affirmance — Krause

The Third Circuit today upheld a federal agency’s power to issue a regulation imposing on mine operators the burden of rebutting disability causation, and it upheld the agency’s award of black-lung benefits to a worker against a mine operator.

Joining Krause were Chevron-critic Jordan and Vanaskie. Arguing counsel were Christopher Pierson of Burns White for the mining operator, Heath Long of Pawlowski Bilonick for the worker, and Sean Bajkowski for the government agency.

By the way, seems like a flurry of Krause opinions lately, no? Turns out, of the Third Circuit’s last 11 published opinions, Judge Krause authored 4 of them, while no other judge wrote more than one. Interesting, but significant? It could well just be a random statistical blip, since she didn’t write any of the 11 published opinions before this.