The following article appeared in the Jan. 21, 2026, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Former Legion employee alleges brewery ignored OSHA rules despite repeated warnings
by Ashley Fahey
Charlotte-based Legion Brewing has been accused by a former employee of repeatedly disregarding safety procedures, in a lawsuit filed last month.
Joshua Denton, who filed the complaint in Mecklenburg County Superior Court on Dec. 12, claims in the suit that Legion — which operates four taprooms in Charlotte — ”showed little interest in even the most basic” Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements and was indifferent to workers who were injured on the job or who brought up safety concerns about the brewery’s operations.
Denton, who started at Legion’s Plaza Midwood location working in maintenance in 2018 and was eventually promoted to safety and maintenance manager, was terminated from the brewery about a year ago, according to the lawsuit.
In response to a request for an interview about the allegations, Legion submitted a statement to The Ledger that said: “As a matter of course, we do not comment on pending legal matters or personnel matters.”
In August 2019, Denton said he walked into a room at Legion’s Plaza Midwood facility and “immediately had a hard time breathing,” which he attributes to inhaling caustic gas caused by improperly stored chemicals. He walked outside to get fresh air, called Poison Control and was told to monitor his symptoms over the next couple of days.
“After that incident, I really started to harp on them about safety and the lack of safety,” he said.
In 2020, Denton said, he realized employees at Legion were operating forklifts and scissor lifts without training as required by OSHA. Legion then appointed him to be in charge of training and certifying employees to operate lifts, which he said he did, but some of those certifications have since expired, according to Denton.
Denton said he was assigned to help install brewing equipment and help oversee the setup of Legion’s West Morehead Street facility, which opened in 2022. He said heavy metal pipe rods on the facility’s ceiling weren’t installed correctly and fell on a semi-regular basis.
Denton claims a rod once fell into a compressor that wasn’t running. Another one fell into a sink that contained a chemical — had someone been standing at the sink, acid would have splashed onto them, Denton said.
He said while he was able to tighten some of the rods every couple of months, he wasn’t able to reach all of them — the ceilings at the West Morehead facility go up to 19 feet — without renting a cherry picker, something Legion would not grant when he requested it, Denton said.
There are a couple of hundred metal rods on the West Morehead facility’s ceiling, according to Denton. At least half a dozen have fallen, to his knowledge. Some of the rods are directly above Legion employee workstations.
Denton, whose duties included working on Legion’s canning line, said he and others were injured — including one time when his finger got stuck between a conveyor and lids for the can — while working on the line. With that injury, Denton said while Legion leadership told him an OSHA report was filed, he never saw it.
Denton says he suffers from ulnar abutment syndrome, a condition in which bones rub together in the wrist, and also has torn ligaments in both of his wrists, both of which he attributes to years of repetitive, strenuous work on the canning line. Despite requesting reduced physical workload while healing from these injuries under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Denton said Legion still called him in to handle tasks and duties that weren’t conducive to his healing.
Accusations of safety disregard within Legion came to a head in 2024, in the wake of a safety-related incident at another Charlotte brewery, Wooden Robot, in which a co-founder was killed after falling at its South End facility. The North Carolina Department of Labor fined the brewery $2,000 for failing to fix the hole that led to the fall.
Denton said after that tragedy, Legion’s chief operating officer asked the head brewer if the brewery was fully up-to-date on safety, and was told yes — something Denton then vocally disagreed with.
At West Morehead, Denton claims he mentioned an OSHA program that would inspect a facility for potential safety hazards without penalty. Phil Buchy, Legion’s owner, allegedly responded by saying that he would fire anyone who invited OSHA into a Legion facility, according to the lawsuit.
“I think a lot of people view OSHA as a gotcha kind of agency — [but], at least at federal OSHA, they never want people to get hurt,” said Melanie Stratton-Lopez, who is part of Denton’s legal team at Van Kampen Law and who formerly worked for the U.S. Department of Labor with the Office of the Solicitor. She added that OSHA does offer compliance assistance to identify potential issues without penalizing a business.
Eventually, Denton and employees ranked below him were not invited to weekly staff meetings. That decision occurred, Denton says, after he repeatedly requested during those meetings that the brewery purchase a chemical cabinet.
Denton was laid off by Legion in January 2025. He told The Ledger that Legion management told him the decision had nothing to do with his performance, attitude or work, but the company was restructuring and no longer needed a maintenance or safety manager.
The lawsuit was first reported by WSOC in December.
Ashley Fahey is The Ledger’s managing editor. Reach her at [email protected].
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