Hale

SW-846 is not the name of some new gasoline additive marketed by an oil company. It is the title of a manual compiled by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dealing with the collection and testing of hazardous waste. The former plant manager of an Anaheim paint manufacturing company, Marion Hale, was convicted under state law of five counts of putting hazardous waste mixed with sawdust into a dumpster, the contents of which were destined for a landfill not authorized to accept hazardous waste. The proof of four of those counts involved evidence based on test samples, the gathering of which did not conform with certain procedures prescribed by SW-846. As we shall now explain, the evidence was properly admitted. California’s hazardous waste control law does not require rigid adherence to the EPA manual, and the deviation from the manual’s procedures in this case was substantively harmless.

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In the mid-1980’s, Hale rose to be the plant manager of W.C. Richards Company, a paint manufacturer. By the late 1980’s, the smell emanating from the waste put into the company’s trash bins was so bad that the trash truck driver would get “high” after making a…