'A Civil Action'
by Jonathan Harr
Random House, $25
For a parent, there is nothing more terrible to consider, much less experience, than the death of a child. In Woburn, Mass., Anne Anderson watched her young son Jimmy die a slow, painful death from leukemia - and Jimmy, she soon learned, was not alone. A number of other children, all from the same small, blue-collar neighborhood, had suffered the same fate.
Anne Anderson's neighborhood lay in the shadow of industrial facilities owned by two of the largest corporations in America, and the water in that part of Woburn had long been a subject of dispute. Residents complained of its taste and smell, but city officials repeatedly assured them that everything was fine. The water, they said, contained nothing unusual and was perfectly safe for everyone, even children, to drink.
Not satisfied with the city's response, Anderson and her neighbors sought a remedy in the courts. Jan Schlichtmann, a flamboyant young trial lawyer with expensive tastes and a flair for winning jury trials, was hired by the families of the young victims. His small office proceeded to take on two of the nation's major corporations - the W.R. Grace Co. and Beatrice Foods - who were represented by two of the largest, most respected law firms in Boston.
Schlichtmann, who favored using expensive hotel suites, with lavish meals and expensive wines, to influence settlement discussions, wagered virtually everything he had on the case: his office, his home, his savings, even his expensive sports car. By the middle of the trial, he was up to his neck in debt and his car had been repossessed; by the last days of the trial, his associates were fending off angry creditors and juggling the firm's last remaining dollars to ensure that Schlichtmann could pay his dry-cleaning bills for the rest of the trial, if nothing else.
Schlichtmann's experts discovered that toxic chemicals from the two plants had seeped underground and poisoned the neighborhood's water supply and, with it, the children who lived there. But many things are believed to contribute to leukemia - even peanut butter has been suspected - and very little is known for certain of the causes.
Difficult case to prove
Most of the dumping had occurred long ago, and only the tattered remnants of history remained: witnesses with fading memories, empty rusted barrels, and earth contaminated by layers of pollution from different sources at different times. Sorting out the causal link between one source of pollution and a disease as poorly understood as leukemia can be difficult business at best; proving it under the harsh conditions of a courtroom can be impossible.
Despite these handicaps, "A Civil Action" tells a gripping story of epic environmental litigation - a story so compelling that Robert Redford is directing a movie version. Author Jonathan Harr immerses us in this legal drama, taking us backstage to watch lawyers fashioning legal proof from raw human experience. Harr, who has written for The New Yorker and other journals, pored over eight years of litigation records and reviewed 50,000 pages of depositions and trial transcripts.
What emerges is a picture of the civil justice system far different from that usually portrayed in the popular media. Here, lawyers make mistakes, face financial realities, and do their best in difficult situations. Unlike their 30-minute, prime-time colleagues, they toil for years before an ending that is never as clean-cut as one might hope.
Harr tells this story with consummate skill, jumping back and forth between the families, their lawyer and the defense, to build real-life suspense. As Schlichtmann aptly describes a trial, it is "like being submerged in deep water for weeks at a time. The world above becomes a faint echo. War, scandal, and natural disaster may occur, but none of it seems to matter."
Yet Harr plainly has his sights set higher than merely retelling the story of the trial, compelling as it is. The Woburn case vividly illustrates how our system of justice allows a small handful of working-class families to hire a lawyer, step into court and challenge powerful corporate interests.
But that's only the most obvious, and least interesting, lesson. Harr's triumph is in his brutally accurate depiction of civil litigation when played for keeps with high stakes. Despite strong evidence of pollution by the defendants, it took eight years and millions of dollars to complete the case.
Costly to everyone
By the end, lawyers on both sides had been found to have violated ethical obligations, and one lawyer was driven to bankruptcy. The sheer cost of the trial - expert analysis and testimony, graphic exhibits and thousands of hours of preparation - ultimately absorbed a huge percentage of the award for damages. The remainder was reduced further to compensate the families' lawyer's contingent fee.
The families who suffered the tragedy - remember them? - ultimately recovered a relatively small amount after years of struggle. Their lawyer was left in bankruptcy, and their corporate opponents were left to ponder liability on obscure grounds.
"A Civil Action" has an uncomfortably untidy ending - but perhaps more true and accurate than we might like to admit.
