Fraud Case Against Trash Firm Sustained

Waste Management Inc. failed Thursday to derail a criminal fraud case against the corporation and some of its executives. The case involves allegations that they carried out a campaign of corporate espionage to develop a desert landfill.

San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Joseph E. Johnston denied a motion that the cases be dismissed against Waste Management Vice President Stu Clark, project manager Glen Odell and former Vice President Robert Morris. However, charges against a fourth individual, Waste Management consultant Harold Cahill, were dismissed by the judge.

Defense attorneys had argued that prosecutors failed to inform a grand jury of the unsavory past of one of its key witnesses, Joseph E. Lauricella. The argument was rejected by Johnston, except in the case of Cahill, because most of the allegations against him were based on Lauricella’s testimony.

Waste Management and its executives were indicted in October on 20 felony counts relating to their alleged efforts to financially cripple Cadiz Inc., a Santa Monica-based agribusiness with extensive holdings near the proposed dump site and a foe of the landfill project.

Much of the case against Waste Management was based on grand jury testimony from Lauricella, a career con man who currently is in prison. He testified that he was hired as a consultant by Waste Management and assisted in the anti-Cadiz campaign.

Defense attorneys contended that had grand jury members known of Lauricella’s criminal past, his testimony would have been discounted and there would have been no indictments.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office said it shared with grand jury members what they knew of Lauricella’s past at the time, and claimed that many of his allegations of wrongdoing by Waste Management have been corroborated through company documents and other witnesses.

The landfill project, called Rail-Cycle, called for trash from Orange and Los Angeles counties to be shipped by rail to a site near Amboy in the Mojave Desert. San Bernardino County voters rejected the proposal in 1996, and after the indictments, the company gave up its plans.

Waste Management was already the world’s largest waste-disposal firm when it merged last year with USA Waste. Although the newly formed company retained the Waste Management name, it is now dominated by executives from USA Waste.