(Income) Expense from Divestitures, Asset Impairments and Unusual Items

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2011

(Income) Expense from Divestitures, Asset Impairments and Unusual Items [Abstract]

(Income) Expense from Divestitures, Asset Impairments and Unusual Items

12.   (Income) Expense from Divestitures, Asset Impairments and Unusual Items

During the third quarter of 2011, we recognized impairment charges relating to two facilities in our medical waste services business as a result of the closure of one site and as a result of continuing operating losses at the other site. We wrote down the net book values of the sites to their estimated fair values.

We filed a lawsuit in March 2008 related to the revenue management software implementation that was suspended in 2007 and abandoned in 2009. Accordingly, in 2009, we recognized a non-cash charge of $51 million for the abandonment of the licensed software. In April 2010, we settled the lawsuit and received a one-time cash payment. The settlement increased our “Income from operations” for the nine months ended September 30, 2010 by $77 million.