The company had admitted to the EPA that its employees had dug a pit behind the plant and placed several drums into it. The company had described this material as “generally innocuous,” and had stated that no actual drums had been buried. But Schlichtmann knew that this admission had been incomplete at best, and perhaps even a deliberate lie. The EPA, after all, had subsequently unearthed from the plant’s backyard six corroded drums, lying end to end, which had once contained TCE and other toxic solvents.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 765