3rd Defendant Has Charges Dismissed in Landfill Case

A major fraud case against trash giant Waste Management Inc. shrank further Wednesday when a state appeals court dismissed criminal charges against a former San Bernardino County employee who had been accused of conspiring with the waste firm to ruin a company that fought a proposed desert dump.

The ruling by the state Court of Appeal made Philip Smith, a former county planning official, the third defendant to win dismissal of all charges. Last summer, former Waste Management executives Robert Morris and Harold Cahill were dismissed from the case.

Waste Management and former executives Glen Odell and Stuart Clark remain under indictment, but the most serious charges of securities fraud have also been dismissed.

The remaining counts may also be in jeopardy. Attorneys for Waste Management filed documents in San Bernardino Superior Court this week showing that the company it allegedly sought to ruin paid more than $40,000 to prosecution witness Joseph Lauricella, whose grand jury testimony in 1998 led to the indictments. Lauricella, a convicted felon who had been a consultant to Waste Management, is in state prison but is expected to be a star prosecution witness if the case goes to trial.

The firm that paid him, Cadiz Inc., said the money was to reimburse Lauricella for providing thousands of pages of documents Cadiz needed to pursue parallel civil damage claims against Waste Management.

Waste Management lawyers said they will argue at a hearing Jan. 19 that the payments were an attempt to buy testimony and should result in dismissal of all remaining charges.

The case stems from a bitter battle over Waste Management’s plan for a massive landfill in the Mojave Desert. The plan was opposed by Cadiz, a Santa Monica-based produce grower with extensive cropland adjacent to the proposed dump site, which has since been abandoned.