Koch Industries, criminal actions; pollution; legal problems, Smalley tragedy:

These misdeeds paled, however, in comparison with what befell two teenagers in the rural town of Lively, Texas, some fifty miles southeast of Dallas, on August 24, 1996. That afternoon, Danielle Smalley, a newly minted high school graduate, was at home in the family trailer, packing her things for college. A friend, Jason Stone, was over, to talk about the farewell party they were planning for her that night. Smalley's father, Danny, a mechanic, was home too, watching sports on television. A faint but increasingly nauseating smell was the only sign that something was amiss.  After they could find no source, Danielle and Jason decided to drive to a neighbor's house to report a possible gas leak. The family had no phone of their own. Borrowing Danny Smalley's truck, they set out, but the truck stalled a few hundred feet away. When Danielle, who was at the wheel, tried to restart it. the ignition lit an invisible cloud of butane gas that was leaking from a corroded, underground Koch pipeline that ran not far from the house, setting off a monstrous blast. A towering fireball utterly consumed the truck. Danielle and Jason burned to death. 
....
As the two sides prepared for trial, a chilling picture of corporate negligence emerged. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that Koch Pipeline Company, the unit in charge, knew that the pipeline was corroded and had neither made all of the necessary repairs nor told the forty or so families living near the explosion site how to handle an emergency.
...
[When a] former employee, Kenoth Whitstine, testified in a deposition that when he brought concerns ... about [the] corroding pipeline...he was told that it would be cheaper to pay off damages from a lawsuit than make the repairs. 
...
On October 21, 1999, [the jury] found Koch Industries guilty not just of negligence but of malice, too, because it had known of the extreme hazard its decaying pipeline had posed. ... The jury...imposed a fine...demanding Koch Industries pay [Danny Smalley] $296 million. At the time, it was the largest wrongful death award on record. {157-159)