Court adjusts preliminary deterrence amount

The Asbestos Penalty Policy recommends that the penalty derived from consideration of the gravity of the violation be adjusted to the extent appropriate to take into account the additional adjustment factors discussed in the General CAA Penalty Policy.

The General CAA Penalty Policy provides guidance for adjustments to take into account the violator’s history of violations, degree of willfulness or negligence, degree of cooperation, and environmental damage.

These adjustments are to be applied to the gravity component of the penalty, which includes the increase on account of the size of the violator’s business, but are not intended to affect the economic benefit component of the penalty.

In the present case, we have determined to assess a gravity-based penalty of $30,800 (consisting of $16,500 for the notice violation, $2,200 for the record- keeping violation, $7,100 for the violation of the wetting requirements, and $5,000 for the size-of-business penalty factor), and a $4,800 economic benefit-based penalty.

As discussed below, we reduce the gravity component by 15% to reflect Friedman & Schmitt’s cooperation and good faith after the violations were discovered, but we do not make any adjustment on account of their compliance history and pre-discovery compliance efforts.