Diceon of Irvine Pleads No Contest in Waste Dumping; Fined $600,000

Diceon Electronics Inc. has agreed to settle criminal charges of illegally dumping toxic wastes into the Los Angeles sewer system, with the firm pleading no contest to three felony charges and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office agreeing to drop felony charges against the firm’s two top officers and one former employee.

Under the agreement, Diceon agreed to pay a $600,000 fine and was placed on three years’ probation. Charges were dropped against Roland G. Matthews, Diceon’s president and chief executive. Peter S. Jonas, executive vice president, and Richard Thomas, a former director of manufacturing, each pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor charge and were placed on one year’s probation.

By pleading no contest, a defendant does not admit guilt, though prosecutors consider such a plea equivalent to a conviction.

Diceon, one of the country’s largest independent manufacturers of computer circuit boards, was charged in October with 12 felony and misdemeanor counts of illegally discharging acid, lead, copper and other toxics from its Chatsworth plant into the sewer system.

Thomas was named in all the counts; Jonas and Matthews were each charged with one felony and four misdemeanor counts.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner has been in the forefront of a national trend toward seeking criminal prosecution of corporate officers in pollution cases, a tactic that prosecutors defend as needed to deter environmental crime. Defense attorneys say threatening corporate officers with prison sentences is simply a way for prosecutors to force companies to settle cases that are complicated and expensive to defend.

Under California law, a corporate executive can be subject to criminal prosecution only if prosecutors prove that they “knew or reasonably should have known” that a hazardous-waste violation was being committed.

David Guthman, head of the environmental crime section of Reiner’s office, said there were “substantial mitigating factors” in the Diceon case that led his office to agree to the reduced charges.

He cited the firm’s forthrightness in admitting that violations had taken place; the good-faith effort Diceon had made to fix problems with its waste disposal system before the criminal proceeding, and the company’s record as a good corporate citizen.

Joel S. Moskowitz, a well-known environmental lawyer who represented Diceon, said the company agreed to the settlement “to avoid the time, expense and distraction from the business of the company that a lengthy trial would have entailed.”

Guthman said the $600,000 fine, though substantial, is not the largest ever imposed in an environmental case in Los Angeles. The district attorney’s office receives 25% of the fine to help pay for other environmental cases.

Diceon, which has been in financial straits as a result of a slowdown in the electronics business, said at the time the charges were filed that it had taken corrective actions at the Chatsworth plant to prevent further discharges and that those measures had been approved by the County Department of Public Works. The circuit board plant is now operating normally.

The district attorney’s office, however, said illegal discharges from the Chatsworth plant had continued even after a raid on the facility in January, 1989, by the interagency Hazardous Waste Strike Force.

Matthews and Jonas were charged on the ground that they must have known of the problemsafter the raid.