Property ownership does not license dumping waste that pollutes public waters.

Evidence

Schlichtmann began searching the files of local and state agencies that might have had dealings with the tannery. At the state public health department, he finally got his first true break. He found a report—he called it “the killer document”—that proved Riley had not told the truth at his deposition. It was two pages long, dated July 12, 1956, the typewritten notes of a sanitary engineer named A. C. Bolde who had gone to the tannery in response to repeated complaints by east Woburn residents about “terrible” and “foul” odors. According to Bolde’s notes, he and Riley had walked up the dirt road leading onto the fifteen acres. “It was observed,” wrote Bolde, “that large quantities of old sludge containing hair and some fleshings were deposited between the Access Road and the Aberjona River for a length of 500 to 600 feet. Some of those deposits were within a few inches of the water.…” Bolde told Riley that he’d have to remove the tannery waste. Riley objected, stating that he owned the land and could therefore use it as he wished. “[I] pointed out to him,” wrote Bolde, “that regardless of ownership, the placing of such materials which may result in polluting the river is in violation of existing state laws.” Riley had finally agreed (“reluctantly,” noted Bolde) to remove the tannery waste. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1025

Categorization

• SHARE: A 1956 bureaucratic memo that quietly sank a defendant’s sworn testimony decades later — pure archival-detective catnip.
• SEED: Angle: the document that wins a case is usually two pages of some mid-century civil servant’s typewritten notes, not forensic science.
• XREF: connects to: Environmental law rests on police power over private activity, not government property ownership. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 246; Legislative power cannot take property without the owner’s consent — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 171

Broader Connections

• Environmental law rests on police power over private activity, not government property ownership. #expands (0.95) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 246
• Legislative power cannot take property without the owner’s consent #complicates (0.90) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 171