It said: “Up ’til September; Used trichloro, 150 gallons.” To Schlichtmann, this could only mean that the Grace plant had used 150 gallons—slightly less than three 55-gallon drums—in the first nine months of 1973. If that inference was true, it meant the plant had consumed four drums of TCE a year up until 1973, not merely four drums throughout its entire history. And that translated into fifty or more drums of TCE.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 963