Notes

Ladies and gentlemen of the court, a ten-year old’s imagination can be truly bewildering. They can perceive floating clouds to be fluffy bunnies, shadows to be lurking monsters, and in young environmentalist Lindsey White’s case, a protruding chemical solution container to be hidden treasure.

Of course, when one discovers what seems to be buried treasure, the natural instinct would be to dig it up. However, instead of unlocking a chest full of gold and silver, Lindsey and her friends opened the ultimate Pandora’s box; inside the barrels were gallons of ethyl methyl solution, an extremely harmful and cancerous chemical upon contact. Following this discovery, Lindsey was diagnosed with severe seborrhea, psoriasis, and now receives daily treatment for a skin condition doctors believe to be cancerous. The other children with her the evening of October 27th? All now suffer from various health issues and skin diseases.

Such a terrible outcome could’ve been so easily prevented. Your honour, ladies, and gentlemen, being parents and guardians yourselves, you must be wondering where were their parents? Where were their guardians? Who was responsible for them?

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And that, you see, is the ultimate question. Who was, and still is, responsible for all this?

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Responsibility is a finicky subject. Each and every person’s belief of what taking responsibility looks like is different. However, when dozens of children are affected by a terrible, preventable chemical leak, I’m certain everyone can agree that someone must be held responsible for neglecting previous responsibilities. Someone was so negligent that they inflicted a mass amount of suffering onto a group of innocent children. It is crucial that we do not mistake who we proclaim responsible for this grave crime or the true culprit will get away.

Your honour and ladies and gentlemen of the court. We are gathered here today because our friends believe that they have found the culprit. They are blaming and suing the Monk Agricultural Chemical Company, or MACC, the previous owner of the campgrounds in which ESL operates. MACC is owned by our first witness, CEO Taylor Monk, who will tell you about his company barrels and the company’s stringent policies on environmental wellbeing.



Through our three witnesses, we will establish that 1) the barrels found at the campground cannot be proven to be belonging to MACC, 2) that even if they were, no one at MACC had knowledge of this improper and illegal disposal, and that 3) MACC had handed over all licenses, permits, and regulatory documents to authorities and the prosecution side with due diligence.