Shaffer Equipment Company was a corporation that had been engaged in rebuilding electrical substations for mining companies in West Virginia. This work involved transferring transformer fluid from transformers. In the 1980s, the EPA discovered that Shaffer had been responsible for a large spill of that transformer fluid into the soil they had been working on, creating soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The EPA thus began the cleanup of the site with Robert E. Caron in charge. Caron decided to use a new cleanup technique to extract the PCBs. That technique failed, causing the EPA to eventually spend over $ 5 million in this cleanup. During the EPA's subsequent lawsuit with Shaffer, it was determined by the court that Caron "had misrepresented his academic achievements and credentials in this and in other cases." IT was consequently determined by the court that "the government's attorneys repeatedly violated their duty of candor to the court by failing to disclose Caron's misrepresentations, by obstructing defendant's efforts to discover them, and by continuing the litigation" with evidence based on Caron's testimony, now considered immaterial. On December 9, 1993, The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the defendants, even forcing the EPA to pay the defendant's attorney fees. A precedent was thus set that the EPA could be beaten because it is a large organization like the companies it is normally fighting against.