## Facts

- Edward Hanousek, Jr. was a roadmaster supervising track maintenance and construction for the White Pass & Yukon Railroad in Alaska.
- He oversaw a “6-mile” rock-quarrying and curve-realignment project on an embankment above the Skagway River.
- An affiliated company owned a high-pressure petroleum pipeline running parallel to the tracks within a few feet, at times at or above ground level.
- An independent contractor (Hunz & Hunz) provided equipment and operators, including a backhoe used near the pipeline to load rock into railcars.
- A portion of the pipeline (about 300 feet) had been covered with ties, sand, and ballast, but other portions were left unprotected as work continued.
- In October 1994, a contractor’s backhoe operator struck an unprotected section of the pipeline, rupturing it and spilling roughly 1,000–5,000 gallons of oil into the Skagway River.
- Hanousek was off duty at home when the rupture occurred, but he remained the project supervisor.
- He was convicted in federal district court of negligently discharging oil into navigable waters under the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. §§ 1319(c)(1)(A), 1321(b)(3), and received a fine and a custodial/community-corrections sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether “negligently” in 33 U.S.C. § 1319(c)(1)(A) requires ordinary negligence or a heightened “criminal”/gross negligence standard.
2. Whether imposing criminal liability for an ordinary-negligence CWA violation violates due process.
3. Whether the jury instructions improperly allowed vicarious liability and misstated causation.
4. Whether the district court properly applied the Sentencing Guidelines.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence.
- The court held that § 1319(c)(1)(A) uses an ordinary negligence standard.
- The court rejected the due process challenge to criminal liability based on ordinary negligence in this regulatory context.
- The court found no reversible error in the negligence, vicarious-liability, or causation instructions, reading the charge to require proof of Hanousek’s own negligent acts or omissions and a causal connection to the discharge.
- The court upheld the Guidelines calculations and the sentence imposed.

## Legal Principles

- For CWA negligent-discharge crimes under 33 U.S.C. § 1319(c)(1)(A), the mens rea is ordinary negligence; the statute does not require proof of gross negligence or “criminal negligence.”
- In a heavily regulated area involving hazardous discharges into navigable waters, Congress may impose criminal sanctions keyed to ordinary-care failures without violating due process.
- Supervisors may be criminally liable where their own negligent supervision or failure to implement reasonable protective measures is a proximate cause of an unlawful discharge, even if they are not present at the moment of the release.
- Jury instructions are adequate if they require the government to prove the defendant’s negligent conduct and a causal link between that negligence and the prohibited discharge, rather than mere responsibility for another’s acts.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit sustained a Clean Water Act conviction based on ordinary negligence, holding that the statute’s unqualified “negligently” standard supports criminal liability for a supervisor whose unreasonable omissions foreseeably contributed to an oil spill, and that such liability is consistent with due process in the context of regulated environmental hazards.


United States v. Hanousek, 176 F.3d 1116 (9th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1102 (2000)