Opinion ID: 785944
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Authorities Relied upon by ALC

Text: 20 ALC first counters the government's arguments by citing a number of cases from district courts within this Circuit that have recognized-either explicitly or implicitly-the availability of the laboratory error defense. While no defendant in these cases has actually made it past the summary judgment stage based on the laboratory error defense, that lack of success has been due to district courts finding that the defendants failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of a laboratory error, and not because the defendants were precluded from raising the defense as a matter of law. 21 In Public Interest Research Group, Inc. v. Elf Atochem North America, Inc., 817 F.Supp. 1164 (D.N.J.1993), a similar case of potential overreporting came before the District Court. The defendant claimed that errors in its laboratory testing had resulted in the overreporting of toxic discharges. Split sampling over a six-month period revealed large discrepancies between the defendant's results and those from outside laboratories, though no consistent pattern could be detected in those discrepancies (sometimes the defendant's results were higher, and sometimes they were lower than the outside laboratories' results). 22 The Court explained that if a defendant wishes to contest the accuracy of its DMRs, it `has a heavy burden to establish faulty analysis.' Id. at 1178 (quoting Student Pub. Interest Research Group, Inc. v. Georgia-Pacific Corp., 615 F.Supp. 1419, 1429 (D.N.J.1985)). The `defendant must present direct evidence of reporting inaccuracies' and `may not rely on unsupported speculation of measurement error.' Id. (quoting Georgia-Pacific Corp., 615 F.Supp. at 1429). The fact that no court in this district ha[d] thus far found a defendant to have met this heavy burden, id., however, did not preclude the possibility of the defense as a matter of law. 23 The Elf Atochem Court, in discussing the reasoning in Upjohn, quotes Chesapeake Bay Foundation v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 608 F.Supp. 440, 452 (D.Md.1985), which stated that `[g]iven the heavy emphasis on accuracy in the Act and the clear Congressional policy that DMRs should be used for enforcement purposes, the court will not accept claims of inaccurate monitoring as a defense.' Elf Atochem, 817 F.Supp. at 1179. The Elf Atochem Court agreed that the Act places the burden of accurately monitoring the levels of pollutants in their effluent squarely on the shoulders of permit holders, and that we must hold them to that obligation, but it ultimately held that 24 while we agree with the [ Upjohn ] court that it is inconsistent with the structure and purpose of the Act to allow permit holders to escape liability altogether on the basis of laboratory error, we find it more accurate, where laboratory error has been shown, to hold a defendant liable for a monitoring violation rather than a discharge violation. Elf Atochem, 817 F.Supp. at 1179 (emphasis added). 25 Similarly, in Public Interest Research Group, Inc. v. Yates Industries, Inc., 757 F.Supp. 438, 447 (D.N.J.1991), the Court expressly recognized the laboratory error defense, noting that DMRs may be deemed admissions when establishing liability in summary judgment motions, but are not conclusive proof of liability. The Court held that under some circumstances, a defendant may avoid liability at the summary judgment stage on the basis of inaccurate data in DMRs. Id. While the Yates Court also recognized the heavy burden on the defendant to prove laboratory error, it stated that a showing of `errors in the actual tests performed which showed a permit violations [sic]' may defeat a summary judgment motion. Id. (quoting Student Pub. Interest Research Group, Inc. v. Tenneco Polymers, Inc., 602 F.Supp. 1394, 1400 (D.N.J.1985)). Thus, while the Court ultimately granted summary judgment against the defendant-based on the fact that the cover letters the defendant submitted to the Court were too speculative in that they merely asserted that the defendant felt and believed that laboratory errors had occurred-it clearly implied that had the factual situation been different, Yates could have survived a summary judgment motion based on a laboratory error defense. See id.