## Facts

- Johnson & Towers, Inc. operated a Mount Laurel, New Jersey facility that repaired and overhauled large motor vehicles and used industrial degreasers and chemicals.
- Waste chemicals from cleaning operations, including methylene chloride and trichloroethylene, were hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and pollutants under the Clean Water Act.
- The waste was drained into a holding tank and, when full, pumped into a trench that carried the waste offsite into Parker’s Creek, a tributary of the Delaware River.
- The Environmental Protection Agency had neither issued nor received a permit application for Johnson & Towers’ hazardous-waste operations.
- Federal agents surveilled the facility over three days and observed workers pump waste from the tank into the trench; on the third day, agents observed toxic chemicals flowing into the creek.
- A federal indictment charged the corporation and two employees (a foreman and a supervisor/manager) with conspiracy; multiple substantive RCRA violations for unpermitted hazardous-waste treatment/storage/disposal; and a Clean Water Act violation, with aiding-and-abetting allegations for the individuals.
- The corporation pled guilty; the dispute on appeal concerned whether the RCRA counts could proceed against the two individual employees.

## Issues

1. Whether RCRA’s criminal provision, imposing liability on “any person” who knowingly treats, stores, or disposes of hazardous waste without a permit, permits prosecution of responsible corporate employees who are not themselves the facility’s “owner or operator” required to obtain the permit.
2. Whether the district court erred by limiting RCRA criminal liability to the corporate permit-holder (owner/operator) and dismissing the RCRA counts against the individual defendants.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of the RCRA counts against the individual defendants.
- The court held that the term “any person” in RCRA’s criminal provision is broad and includes individuals as well as corporations.
- The court reinstated the RCRA counts against the employees and remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- Under RCRA, criminal liability for knowing unpermitted treatment, storage, or disposal of hazardous waste extends to “any person,” including responsible corporate employees and officers.
- The regulatory duty to obtain a permit may be imposed on the facility’s “owner or operator,” but the criminal prohibition reaches individuals who knowingly engage in prohibited hazardous-waste conduct in the absence of a permit.
- Individual liability is consistent with RCRA’s statutory definition of “person” and with the enforcement aim of preventing hazardous-waste mismanagement; a narrowing construction that effectively immunizes responsible employees is disfavored.

## Conclusion

The Third Circuit held that RCRA’s criminal prohibition on knowing unpermitted hazardous-waste handling applies to individuals within a corporation, not solely to the corporate owner/operator, and it reinstated the dismissed RCRA counts against the employee defendants for further proceedings.


United States v. Johnson & Towers, Inc., 741 F.2d 662 (3d Cir. 1984)