Key Exxon witness defends leak detectors in Baltimore County Circuit

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jan 13, 2009 by Danny Jacobs

In 2002, the ExxonMobil Corp. employee in charge of maintenance and repair at hundreds of gas stations in the mid-Atlantic, including one in Jacksonville, sent out an e-mail warning of an "atmosphere of distrust" around a system designed to detect leaks.

"Electronic leak detectors DO NOT HOLD UP," Joseph V. Mocsary wrote in capital letters. "Do we want to keep spending millions of our expense money each year to chase this system?"

Mocsary was shown his e-mail in Baltimore County Circuit Court on Monday, a day before the three-year anniversary of the start of the 26,000-gallon gas leak resulting in the billion-dollar lawsuit filed by more than 300 Jacksonville residents.

Asked by lead plaintiffs' counsel Stephen L. Snyder to explain the e-mail in light of Jacksonville gas leak, Mocsary said he was only referring to problems with compliance testing and parts for the line leak detector.

"We did not have a reliability issue with the unit," he said.

Contentious

So it went for Snyder and Mocsary during the latter's four-hour testimony, his second day on the witness stand. Snyder, of Snyder, Weltchek & Snyder in Pikesville, would attempt to point out a contradiction in Mocsary's testimony through either an earlier deposition or correspondence. Mocsary, in response, would try to give a fuller explanation of his earlier statements or correct Snyder's rephrasing of his testimony.

"You're twisting the words," Mocsary said at one point.

"Yeah, I'm twisting the words," Snyder responded sarcastically, after earlier accusing Mocsary of "making things up."

The two could not even agree on why technicians responded to the Jacksonville site on Jan. 13, 2006, when the leak began; Snyder provided documentation indicating it was because of a reported tank overfill, while Mocsary said it was because the line leak detector alarm sounded. A line leak detector, which is required by law, alerts a gas station operator to a leak of more than 3 gallons an hour.

"We knew we had a leak," Mocsary said. "We had an alarm that took us to the site."

Trial in the case began last October. An official with Pikesville- based Alger Electric Inc., the Exxon subcontractor who responded to the site, testified in November that workers responded to the site after an alarm went off because of a reported "overflowing" gas tank and did not observe a gas leak.

Mocsary testified Monday the technicians left the station without closing a valve on the detector, which led to it being improperly reset and therefore unable to detect the leak for more than five weeks. Mocsary said he came to his conclusion, which is Exxon's position, after reading the depositions of the responding technicians.

Snyder reiterated the plaintiffs' contention that the detector model was flawed and that Exxon knew it prior to the Jacksonville leak. The system had a history of going off for reasons other than a leak, Snyder said, and the Jacksonville detector sounded nine additional times Jan. 13, all of which were attributed to the technicians' troubleshooting work.

Mocsary disagreed.

"The unit operated properly on the day of the spill," he said. "We know that it did that."

"But you had the system sent to Chicago to be evaluated," Snyder said.

Mocsary said that was to ensure there was not a "systematic failure" in similar systems.

"We weren't looking at this as being a lawsuit," he said. "We wanted to know what caused this failure because we wanted to know if this is an issue we were going to have to deal with."

Call for more tests

Snyder also questioned Mocsary about a July 2006 e-mail in which Mocsary advised against delivering and pumping gas at a station where a line leak detector has gone off until additional tests are performed to determine the alarm's cause because it otherwise "exposes us to liabilities."

"Had a precision tank test been performed on the 13th, we would have avoided this disaster," Snyder said.

"We would have verified there was a leak," Mocsary replied.

Mocsary's testimony was scheduled to continue Tuesday.