Lawsuit Ups Ante for Proposed Shredder in California City

His fliers bear skulls and crossbones and accuse a regional recycler of trading "poison for profits" with a plan in Colton to shred tons of cars and metal scraps into fist-size pieces for recycling.

Jess Vasquez is a giant rotary cutter in the side of Charles Siroonian.

Siroonian, the owner of about two-dozen metal-recycling yards, is waging an advertising and public-relations campaign to discredit the neighborhood activist's assertions that expanding the Pacific Rail Industries' dismantling yard by adding a car shredder will damage his neighborhood, which is nearby in south Colton.

Expanding the site, Siroonian says, will add 40 jobs and a whopping electricity bill for a city wanting to recoup an investment in a new municipal power plant.

Siroonian's 3-year-old plan to recycle some of the half-million cars junked annually in Southern California has encountered lengthy delays caused by a competitor's lawsuit, which forced unexpected environmental scrutiny of his proposal. To settle the suit, Colton officials required Pacific Rail to pay for an environmental impact report, which was released in May. City planners initially had not required the study.

Few residents of the south Colton neighborhood say they have read the foot-high environmental-impact report. Most say they get their written information about the shredder from Vasquez, whose descriptions are worthy of a horror film. Trucks belch smoke and drip liquids; a 220-ton metal monster chews, shaking the earth, schools and businesses, his fliers say.

Siroonian says none of this is accurate.

Vasquez collected 800 signatures on a petition that opposed the shredder and presented it last month to the Colton Planning Commission, which may vote on the project after a second public hearing on Sept. 28.

Siroonian matched Vasquez's petition with a collection of signatures supporting his expansion. Employees from Pacific Rail and his other scrap yards packed public meetings to show support for the shredder.

The Pacific Rail owner has advertised heavily on Spanish-language radio and in a free weekly city newspaper. Full-page ads and radio spots are paired with on-air interviews and articles that praise Siroonian as a good corporate citizen and portray Vasquez in a less flattering light.

In July, Pacific Rail gave away hundreds of meals at a restaurant's anniversary fiesta that prominently featured the shredder project. Across the street, Vasquez attempted to show a video of the shredder operating at Clean Steel in Carson, but police shut him down for not having a permit.

Last month, Vasquez was named in a suit that he and others believe may be designed to silence criticism of the shredder.

Siroonian professes no connection to the libel and defamation lawsuit, filed by National Metal & Steel Corp. of Maryland, part owner of the company that operated the shredder in Carson. That company, Clean Steel, closed in December 2003 and is selling its shredder to Pacific Rail.

National Metal's Los Angeles-based attorney Joshua N. Levine did not return calls seeking comment.

"Vasquez," the complaint states, "has gone above and beyond the acceptable boundaries for expression of opinion and has made several demonstrably false statements designed to convey a false impression about the history, safety and operation of the shredder."

State law bars lawsuits intended to squelch the free-speech rights of those commenting on public concerns, said Mark Goldowitz, an Oakland public-interest attorney and director of the California Anti-SLAPP Project since 1991. SLAPP stand for strategic litigation against public participation.

"Large corporations increasingly use the legal system to silence their critics and opponents in public debates. Their critics don't have the money for a court battle," Goldowitz said.

The National Metal lawsuit, filed the day before the first public hearing on the shredder, has all the earmarks of a SLAPP suit, Goldowitz said.

Vasquez said the lawsuit shook him up. "I'm totally shocked that they would go after such a little guy like me," he said by phone.

Colton Planning Commissioner Joe Perez III said he was disappointed to hear