Environmental Law

Clean Air Act Initiatives

By Walter James

Last week I reported that one of the DOJ?s priorities was going to be a continued focus on Clean Air Act cases. That, coupled with the fact that the DOJ has about eighty (80) percent of the refinery capacity under consent decrees for various violations, makes this report somewhat interesting. On September 13, 2007, Honeywell International agreed to pay an $8,000.000.00 fine, plus

$4,000,000.00 in restitution for negligently causing the release of hazardous air pollutants and placing an employee in imminent danger of death. Honeywell was also sentenced to two years of probation. See United States v. Honeywell International, M.D. La., No. 07-31, (sentenced 9/13/07). The charges stemmed from an ongoing investigation into a July 2003 incident at Honeywell's Baton Rouge plant. That investigation was spurred by an incident where an employee opened a one-ton cylinder of spent antimony pentachloride that had been erroneously labeled as containing a relatively benign refrigerant. Spent antimony pentachloride is a highly toxic and a corrosive hazardous material. Once the cylinder was opened, the spent antimony pentachloride was violently released into the ambient air. The employee was killed.

A good friend of mine, David Weinstein was involved in this matter representing individuals.

One of the things that is often overlooked in these kind of cases is that the standard for conviction is, according to the DOJ, mere negligence (as in the kind of negligence that you learn about in law school in tort class), not the ?criminal negligence? that is more comparable to the gross negligence standard in the civil context.

More later.

As always, feel free to give me a call or e-mail me at walter.james@jamespllc.com

WDJiii

Full post as published by Environmental Crimes Blog on September 19, 2007 (boomark / email).