Opinion ID: 199558
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Black & Decker a/k/a Gar

Text: Gar operated an electroplating business in Danbury, Connecticut. Its waste contained nitric acid, copper, nickel, and - 52 - cyanide. According to CWR records, the transporter picked up five loads of waste from Gar on May 6 (13 drums), June 20 (5 drums), June 27 (2 drums), September 2 (7 drums), and September 30 (11 drums). A Davis receipt shows that on June 21, the day after the five-drum pickup, CWR disposed of 60 drums of waste at the Davis site. The five drums collected on June 20 contained 275 gallons of waste. Based on this evidence, the district court found Gar liable for dumping 275 gallons of waste at the Davis site. Gar poses two challenges to the court's factual findings.27 It notes that CWR picked up more than 300 drums28 from Connecticut and New Jersey customers on the three business days before June 21, and concludes that in light of those pickups it is not mathematically likely that Gar's five drums were among the 60 drums that CWR delivered to Davis on June 21. Admittedly, the collection of more than 300 drums in the days leading up to the June 21 delivery to Davis means that it is less likely that Gar's five drums were among those delivered than it is, for example, that the 79 drums picked up from Ashland on June 1 were the 79 drums delivered to the Davis site on June 2. 27Gar also argues, like Ashland, that there was no direct evidence that its waste ended up at Davis, and that CWR regularly offloaded its customers' waste at its property for unspecified periods of time and also mixed different customers' waste at its Bridgeport facility. These arguments fail for the same reasons discussed above. 28Gar says that CWR picked up 352 drums on the three business days before the June 21 delivery. UTC counts 326 drums and 13 smaller containers collected between June 17 and June 22. - 53 - Nonetheless, the evidence that Gar emphasizes does not lead us to conclude that the district court's findings were clear error. As UTC points out, the Davis receipts show that CWR delivered a total of 219 drums to the Davis site on June 21, June 22, and June 23, increasing the likelihood that Gar's five drums were among those delivered. In addition, 62 of the 300-plus drums collected on the preceding days came from customers that sent waste oil to CWR, and so, according to Emanuel Musillo's testimony, would likely have been offloaded and stored for resale rather than being delivered to the Davis site. To cast further doubt on the district court's findings, Gar points out that the Davis slip from June 21 says SOLIDS for solid waste, and that Gar produced liquid waste. Davis's testimony at trial undermines the significance of the solids designation. Davis said that he distinguished between solid and liquid waste because he poured liquid waste out of the barrels and resold them. Because he could not resell the barrels containing solids, he charged more for solid waste (one dollar per barrel) than he did for liquid waste (50 cents per barrel). Davis therefore had a financial incentive to classify drums of waste as solid rather than liquid. Davis also testified that he considered anything solid that did not pour easily, including any sludge or residue left in the drums. Also, there is no evidence that Davis examined each barrel before classifying a shipment. - 54 - Finally, Gar notes that while the evidence shows that CWR driver Johnny Granfield made the June 21 delivery to the Davis site, there is no evidence concerning which CWR driver picked up Gar's waste on June 20. This matters because each CWR driver only drove waste to the Davis site that he himself collected. Thus Gar argues that the possibility that Wilbert Jones, the other CWR driver, picked up its waste on June 20 lessens the likelihood that its waste was among the 60 drums delivered to the Davis site on June 21. However, since there is no evidence to show that Granfield was not the driver who collected Gar's waste on June 20, and since the evidence did establish that the driver who delivered waste to the Davis site had picked it up, the district court could have inferred that Granfield collected the waste from Gar, and that this waste was on his truck when he made the June 21 delivery to Davis.