United States v. Wasserson

Sterling Supply Company (Sterling) had a warehouse in which it stored equipment, business records, and cleaning supplies, including drums and containers containing hazardous waste. Gary Wasserson (defendant), Sterling’s president and chief executive officer, employed an environmental consultant who informed him of the laws related to hazardous-waste storage, disposal, and transport manifests, as well as the extra costs involved in disposing of hazardous waste. A few years after Sterling went out of business, Wasserson hired a former employee, Charles Hughes, to clean out the warehouse. Wasserson did not inform Hughes that the cleaning supplies included hazardous waste or that the hazardous waste would need to be disposed of in a particular manner under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Hughes had the containers hauled off as normal, nonhazardous waste. The United States (plaintiff) brought charges against Wasserson, and he was convicted by a jury for three counts of violations of the RCRA for having caused someone who was not authorized to handle hazardous waste to transport hazardous waste without a manifest and to dispose of it without a permit. Wasserson filed a motion for new trial, claiming that § 6928(d)(2)(A) of the RCRA, which prohibits the disposal of hazardous waste without a permit, applied only to parties operating a disposal facility. The district court granted his motion in part, and the United States appealed.