He was directing cars, not digging - but the court said the danger zone still reached him
A Washington appeals court has ruled that traffic flaggers near deep trenches need fall protection - even when standing nearly eight feet from the edge.
The published decision, handed down July 28, 2026, upheld the state's safety citations and serves as a caution for employers running excavation work.
Here is what happened. A compliance officer with Washington's Department of Labor and Industries inspected a construction site in Olympia, where Northwest Cascade was digging a trench for a sewer connection. The trench ran 17 feet deep. One of the company's flaggers was directing traffic 7 feet, 8 inches from the edge, with no fall protection in place.
The department cited the company for two serious safety violations: failing to provide a fall protection system, and failing to write a fall protection work plan. Each carried a $900 penalty, for $1,800 in total.
Northwest Cascade pushed back. It argued the flagger stood too far from the trench to be at risk, that he counted as someone "directly involved with the excavation process" and was therefore exempt, and that fall protection would have been infeasible anyway.
The superior court agreed the flagger was exempt and reversed the citations. But the Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, affirming the Board and reinstating both violations.
On the distance question, the court turned to the regulation's "affected area" - the zone around a trench equal to its depth, capped at 15 feet. Because the trench was 17 feet deep, that zone reached 15 feet from every edge. The flagger, at under eight feet, sat well inside it. The court noted the wide zone reflects the danger of a trench wall caving in.
On the exemption, the court drew a firm line. "A flagger's job is to control traffic around a trench," it wrote, which made the worker's role in the dig itself "indirect." The exemption, it said, covers people working the excavation - not those steering cars around it.
The company's vice president of safety had testified it was "going above and beyond" basic requirements just by using flaggers at all. The court was unmoved.
On feasibility, the court pointed to testimony that the flagger could simply have stood farther back, outside the affected area, while still doing his job.
For HR and safety leaders, the takeaway is blunt. Fall protection rules can reach workers who never touch the dig. And a written safety plan is not filler paperwork - skip it, and it becomes its own violation.
