Editorial: Justice Can’t Always Be Blind

The U.S. Justice Department has urged the federal judge who is reviewing the proposed settlement between the six companies that make most of the truck diesel engines sold in the United States to ignore claims that they were wronged.

Justice told District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that since the manufacturers — Cummins Engine Co., Caterpillar Inc., Detroit Diesel Corp., Mack Trucks, Navistar International Transportation Corp. and Volvo Truck Corp. — had signed consent decrees, subsequent claims that the Environmental Protection Agency had explicitly approved their actions were irrelevant.

On the face of it, it does seem odd that companies that believed they had done no wrong should agree to consent decrees that claim just the opposite, even if they contain no explicit admissions of wrongdoing. The manufacturers also agreed to a $1 billion package of fines and improvements to reduce the pollution performance of their engines, and to a faster timetable for already scheduled upgrades.

While it is true that none of the engine makers has asked the judge to overturn the decrees, they have virtually all claimed that EPA explicitly approved the very actions for which they were later punished.

Was this just an extension of the old lawyers’ adage that there are no guilty people on death row? We think not.

Rather, it appears that the engine makers were presented with an offer they couldn’t refuse: They could admit to violations they didn’t commit but remain in the engine business, or they could contest EPA’s claims and have their right to sell engines in the U.S. revoked.

Faced with that equation, there are few executives who would take the “high road” and ruin their business defending a principle.

Judge Kennedy doesn’t have a lot of options, since he can’t modify the consent decrees, but can only accept or reject them. We urge him not to follow the Justice Department’s advice, but to examine the claims of EPA double-dealing, even if he feels compelled to approve the consent decrees.

We all deserve to know whether the EPA has been disingenuous in its handling of the engine makers, and whether the potential of political embarrassment that would have resulted from an honest airing of the agency’s involvement in the engine fiasco led officials to unfairly take advantage of the manufacturers.