anxiousintern
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Michigan
This past summer I was an intern at a small civil/environmental company and often worked under the company's only environmental professional, helping him out with environmental site assessments.
The guy had just been hired after having recently left his job as an environmental scientist at a bigger company, and he was trying to get some reports under his belt at the new company in a hurry so he could build a bit of a portfolio to gain more clients (he was basically working independently even though he was working for my company...a bit strange but perhaps not completely relevant).
Anyway, while completing a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment report for a property, he had one of his old co-workers from his previous company send the report that his old company had recently done on the adjacent property. To my understanding, the client who the report was done for was the same as the client of the report he was working on--the client was buying two adjacent properties in a short period of time; I think the previous report had been completed very recently, within a couple of months.
I had been helping this environmental guy with reports in increasing amounts throughout the summer, and for this one, he gave me the old report for the adjacent property from the other company and told me to start developing our report by essentially copying over information that would presumably be the same for both properties: a list of all hazardous waste sites within 10 miles, and a few other similar things. He told me not to tell anyone because it might technically considered corporate espionage.
I wasn't too thrilled about the idea, but I reasoned with myself and told myself it wasn't ultimately that big of a deal, since in my mind there was about a 99.9% chance that for the information that would be copied from one report to the other, there wouldn't be an actual discrepancy with reality, and that even if there was some discrepancy, it would be very small and wouldn't affect the ultimate opinion that the report reached. Plus, I was intimidated and feared telling others within the company or losing my internship...so I went ahead and started writing up the report by copying some of the information.
Now, I didn't see the writing of the report all the way through, I just got it started by copying some of the info from the other report. I never signed the report, as I don't have qualifications to do that.
Also, the overall opinion reached by the Phase I report was that a Phase II investigation was needed, in particular to investigate whether there was contamination in the soil on one side of the site where an adjoining property used to be a gas station.
I left the internship in August and mostly forgot all about the whole matter, but recently, after one of my college engineering classes has gone through a section on ethics, I've felt bad about what happened and the fact that I allowed myself to take part in it, and I'm wondering what the law has to say about the whole thing.
So, I have a few basic questions for anyone who can answer them:
What penalties are associated with failing to do due diligence for an Phase I Environmental Site Assessment by obtaining information secondhand rather than going directly to the proper government sources? How might these penalties apply to me if I was only assisting with the report but not the environmental professional conducting the assessment?
Does the fact that a Phase II was done anyway negate the importance of the Phase I not having due diligence, or is this not the case since hypothetically, a different Phase I outcome could have meant that the Phase II assessment would have looked different?
Also, is this indeed a case of "corporate espionage" or something like that? (Does the other company's completed environmental report count as proprietary information that the company I worked for was stealing?) If so, what penalties might be associated with that, both for the company as a whole, my superior(s), and for me?
Practically, is the EPA likely to care about this if I tell them about it?
Thanks for any help you can give.
This past summer I was an intern at a small civil/environmental company and often worked under the company's only environmental professional, helping him out with environmental site assessments.
The guy had just been hired after having recently left his job as an environmental scientist at a bigger company, and he was trying to get some reports under his belt at the new company in a hurry so he could build a bit of a portfolio to gain more clients (he was basically working independently even though he was working for my company...a bit strange but perhaps not completely relevant).
Anyway, while completing a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment report for a property, he had one of his old co-workers from his previous company send the report that his old company had recently done on the adjacent property. To my understanding, the client who the report was done for was the same as the client of the report he was working on--the client was buying two adjacent properties in a short period of time; I think the previous report had been completed very recently, within a couple of months.
I had been helping this environmental guy with reports in increasing amounts throughout the summer, and for this one, he gave me the old report for the adjacent property from the other company and told me to start developing our report by essentially copying over information that would presumably be the same for both properties: a list of all hazardous waste sites within 10 miles, and a few other similar things. He told me not to tell anyone because it might technically considered corporate espionage.
I wasn't too thrilled about the idea, but I reasoned with myself and told myself it wasn't ultimately that big of a deal, since in my mind there was about a 99.9% chance that for the information that would be copied from one report to the other, there wouldn't be an actual discrepancy with reality, and that even if there was some discrepancy, it would be very small and wouldn't affect the ultimate opinion that the report reached. Plus, I was intimidated and feared telling others within the company or losing my internship...so I went ahead and started writing up the report by copying some of the information.
Now, I didn't see the writing of the report all the way through, I just got it started by copying some of the info from the other report. I never signed the report, as I don't have qualifications to do that.
Also, the overall opinion reached by the Phase I report was that a Phase II investigation was needed, in particular to investigate whether there was contamination in the soil on one side of the site where an adjoining property used to be a gas station.
I left the internship in August and mostly forgot all about the whole matter, but recently, after one of my college engineering classes has gone through a section on ethics, I've felt bad about what happened and the fact that I allowed myself to take part in it, and I'm wondering what the law has to say about the whole thing.
So, I have a few basic questions for anyone who can answer them:
What penalties are associated with failing to do due diligence for an Phase I Environmental Site Assessment by obtaining information secondhand rather than going directly to the proper government sources? How might these penalties apply to me if I was only assisting with the report but not the environmental professional conducting the assessment?
Does the fact that a Phase II was done anyway negate the importance of the Phase I not having due diligence, or is this not the case since hypothetically, a different Phase I outcome could have meant that the Phase II assessment would have looked different?
Also, is this indeed a case of "corporate espionage" or something like that? (Does the other company's completed environmental report count as proprietary information that the company I worked for was stealing?) If so, what penalties might be associated with that, both for the company as a whole, my superior(s), and for me?
Practically, is the EPA likely to care about this if I tell them about it?
Thanks for any help you can give.