Past Charges Against Firm Include Bribery, Price-Fixing

The Santa Clara County grand jury indictments of Waste Management of California announced Wednesday represent the latest legal battle by giant Waste Management Inc., the world’s largest waste disposal company.

Formed in 1968, Waste Management Inc. now operates more than 600 subsidiaries that serve 1,700 public agencies in the United States and Canada. It has offices in 20 other countries, with worldwide revenues of $7 billion last year.

But as it has grown over the past decade, Waste Management has been charged with crimes ranging from bribery to price-fixing.

Recent studies of the company’s record by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the San Diego County district attorney’s office found that the company and its subsidiaries had paid $52.3 million in fines during the 1980s. The studies listed 10 criminal, 22 environmental and 23 civil antitrust cases. Two former Chicago-area employees were found guilty of bribery in the mid-1980s, they noted.

Several major cases have been in California, where Waste Management owns more than 50 companies and operates seven landfills and a toxic-waste dump.

* In Los Angeles County, prosecutors charged in a 1987 antitrust criminal case that Waste Management of California and two other rubbish companies operated an illegal cartel that divided up customers and fixed prices. Two Waste Management officials pleaded no contest, and the company agreed to pay $1 million in fines.

* In Orange County, a Waste Management subsidiary, Dewey’s Rubbish Service of Irvine, pleaded guilty in 1990 to a criminal antitrust count of price-fixing. Waste Management paid a $1-million fine but contended the illegal activity occurred in 1983-84, before it bought the rubbish service.

* In San Diego County, Waste Management of California, doing business as Daily Disposal Service, pleaded guilty in 1990 to a criminal antitrust violation for conspiring to allocate customers and fix prices for its commercial and industrial hauling services. It agreed to pay a $500,000 fine.

* In a plea that affected San Diego County, Waste Management Inc. agreed in 1990 to pay $19.5 million to settle a class-action civil suit charging that the company and Browning-Ferris Industries had conspired to fix refuse prices.

* At Chemical Waste Management’s hazardous-waste dump in the Kettleman Hills in Central California, the company agreed in 1985 to pay fines of $4 million in a case in which the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency alleged the mishandling of hazardous waste.

* At the Kettleman Hills facility, the EPA fined the company $2.5 million in 1984, alleging a total of 130 violations. The EPA said the company had allowed landfill leaks to contaminate the local water supply.