Technical support for law firms

Technical expert witness services for criminal proceedings regarding environmental damage (surface water pollution) in Northern Italy. We provided technical support to the law firm representing the client in the proceedings, preparing an expert report demonstrating the lack of a causal link between transient exceedances of certain parameters in the facility's stormwater discharge and a fish die-off event that occurred in the stream.

Client/Industry

Manufacturing

Year

2019

Service

Legal

Scenario

Following the investigation into a fish die-off event in a stream, a company specializing in the production and marketing of metals has been charged with negligently causing significant contamination of the stream's waters, which received the facility's stormwater runoff. The company is also alleged to have caused high concentrations of pollutants in the stream, which altered its chemical and physical properties and resulted in the death of the fish population.

Solution

We provided technical support to the law firm representing the client in the proceedings by preparing an expert report demonstrating the lack of a causal link between the transient exceedances of certain parameters in the facility's secondary rainwater discharge and the fish die-off event that occurred in the stream.

Activities

Specifically, after a technical and scientific review of the documentation in the case file, the expert technical report demonstrated that:

The alleged offenses did not exist and, in any case, were in no way related to the facts established at the time of the inspection.
There was no technical evidence to link the fish die-off event to the transient exceedances of discharge limits for certain parameters.
The concentrations found and the eco-toxicological characteristics of the substances for which transient discharge limit exceedances were recorded indicated that significant and measurable impairment or deterioration of the stream's water was not possible.