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Summary: soblu32
Review: I received the book promptly and in excellent condition.
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Summary: The Ripple Effect
Review: Wr Grace has essentially been a holding company ;Grace Cryovac, the division involved in this case, made shrink wrap and catered to the food service industry. Grace Construction made asbestos products. Both divisions became embroiled in major costly controversies which flowed back to the generic parent holding company. Another facet to this case is to bring light to the concern of the U.S. legal system as contingent on financial resources of the litigating parties. In business as in our own lives, plaintiffs or defendants can rise or fall with financial capacity, which brings the outcome not to a measure of justice but of wealth. Who said the scales of justice are not tipped?
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Summary: Riveting Research Writing
Review: A Civil Action has all of the components of an excellent novel - riveting, interesting, comprised of good guys and bad guys (innocent victims and chronic polluters). What makes this book even more remarkable is that "A Civil Action" is actually a research project -- it is thoroughly and completely researched, scientific, credible, and actual truth, written by a researcher that had the good luck to have been able to be with the book's subjects during most of the story. I could not put the book down for days. I missed sleep, read it during lunch hours, etc. "A Civil Action" is appropriate for clean-water activists, for research writers (to see first-hand you can actually write fasinating research products), and for those in general who like non-fiction books.
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Summary: An unfinished tale
Review: I know someone i'll refer to as " JR" who worked for one of the big companies of which thise case involves. Not long after going there JR was approached and chastized by more senior employees for entering into a service agreement with "those damned Bonanno brothers". The problem with this is that JR came AFTER the contract was made between the parties. It soon became apparent JR had become a whipping boy for the company.JR was harassed for being environmentally aggressive in stopping chemical waste dumping in Woburn and other communities.
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Summary: Broader questions
Review: This case is fundamentally about responsibility. Corporations by design exist to conduct business with a much higher degree of protection than that afforded to a private citizen. Even if a company is found guilty of anything, the fines imposed are absorbed by laying off workers and the legal fees ultimately passed back to the customer. If an employee observes questionable activity in the company they risk alienation from peers, blocked career growth, or even termination by 'making waves' in the organization. If an outside agency like EPA comes in, they must counterweigh potential layoffs to any fines they might impose. A hidden sleeping giant in regulating corporation responsibility might be insurers of the business, who stand to lose large sums of money in liability cases. In examining this case, one might wonder if there is a relationship between environmental pollution and the ultimate handling of the cleanup. If companies pollute and the EPA ultimately comes in, dispenses funds to orchestrate the cleanup, and remediation contractors are called in, don't the contractors for EPA have a ready business source? Could some of the biggest polluters be friendly to the cleanup companies with which the EPA contracts?
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Summary: Was a child exploited in all of this?
Review: Was one of the child victims in this water tragedy swindled out of an inheritance of some sort? " Scott" began asking questions intensely not long before this book came out. Court records of the case are said to have been destroyed and fire and police records from Woburn are destroyed from the early 1960s. Scott was bounced around and his family persecuted in Woburn. In low income housing in Woburn kids smashed the windows and poured buckets of paint on the back door. The city budget was closed for audits. Scott moved away and years later returned to the area. Soon after another man surfaced across town in Woburn bearing Scott's name. Some of Scott's mail ended up at this other address and the imposter also listed Scott's address as his own when going AWOL in the military. After this book came out Scott joined a prominent church in Lexington, where the imposter appeared to follow him there. Longtime members of the church tracked Scott's appearances at the church ,as is some project involving basket donations was taking place where the church would have extra donations made into the basket claiming Scott did it, perhaps with some money owed to Scott. One of the church 'friends' Scott made there claimed to know George Cashman of the Teamsters Local 25 ,currently under federal investigation. ....
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Summary: Hot Landing Zone
Review: About a year or so after this case blew wide open, a person i'll call " Sean", had some experiences they feel may have been linked to this case. Sean worked for a controversial company, "BigCorp." (pseudonym) in Massachusetts discussed in this book. Almost immediately Sean was approached by an employee alleging strong ties to the Big Dig project. Sean was suddenly fired after some mention within BigCorp.of a contract entered into with alleged organized crime between a former employee and BigCorp.but made to look like Sean had made the deal. Some employees expressed concerns about missing invoices and confusing accounting practices and when Sean was asked to look into the matter,managers came forward in a threatening or hostile manner. Sean was soon part of a 'layoff' -later it was revealed it was a layoff of one. Big Corp. employed former government personnel in the environmental and safety fields. Sean looked for help for a medical problem and soon learned Sean had been referred to a doctor who it turned out was a forensic psychiatrist and this doctor was not addressing the medical problem Sean had raised. This doctor immediately conferred with Sean's primary care doctor and Sean became suspicious something was going on. The health insurance plan was covered by BigCorp. One day a meeting was called for Sean to meet with 2 plan doctors. Suspicious because this came in the midst of harassing phone calls and a wide array of other troubling events, Sean did not go. A few weeks later Sean received a letter from the primary care doctor, a man in his 30s, asserting that the doctor was 'resigning from the field of medicine'. Two years later the forensic psychiatrist dropped dead barely into middle age from unknown causes. An old acquaintance of Sean's, "Bill" who alleged strong ties to both the Justice Department and the Massachusetts state police and former Governor Bill Weld ,suddenly began acting defensive and claimed to know the forensic psychiatrist. A couple years later Bill died from undisclosed causes barely into middle age. Sean had known 3-4 individuals known to each other who had all died barely in middle age in nearly the same time period. Bill had known former employees of BigCorp. in this book. BigCorp. management alleged ties to Bill Weld but this was not confirmed. Over the ensuing years, Sean was called a number of times for interviews with small companies who during the interviews announced they were entering into a business relationship with BigCorp. In at least one case Sean is said to have interviewed at a small company manned by "10-20 employees" with the owner from Canada and one of the interviewers being a former BigCorp. employee using an alias. As Sean repeatedly failed to get employment for even the most mundane jobs, it soon became apparent that sean was being made to look after approaching 30 years of work history as if he suddenly lacked job hunting ,resume prep, or interviewing skills. It also appeared that Sean's mental health was called into question, particularly with respect to BigCorp. Sean was approached by a man hailing from Connecticut and who had an intense interest in Sean's personal associations after writing a letter concerning this case to President Bill Clinton which among mention of local history surrounding the region also detailed a practical means of addressing complex environmental litigation like this in the future.
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Summary: Sad, intriguing, too common
Review: This book centers around a town in a county prosperous in technology.Middlesex county was a hub of activity in the early 1960s and the synchrony of events precipitated by the introduction of this book in 1995 is curious. In 1995 Whitey Bulger disappeared with that convoluted case ensuing a tragedy for all parties involved. Whitey is said to have had a girlfriend in the area and many FBI agents in this case hail from the area. George Cashman, head of Teamsters Local 25 has been a Woburn resident. Cashman has been supportive of former governor (and now Ambassador) Paul Cellucci. In addition to FBI agents, there are undoubtedly many agencies represented as family members in the strata of constituents of Middlesex county. In this case you have 2-3 companies held accountable. The only company which admitted a measure of responsibility in the tragedy is Grace. In the region there may have been 60-100 firms doing business with varying levels of dumping going on at a time predating EPA and RCRA ( establishing EPA) and that dumping was legal. Part of the problem in this case might have been a confusion over regulatory oversight. The Slichter Act empowered the state to intervene in matters of public safety.The Slichter Act was formed in the late 1940s in the wake of Mob violence breaking up a strike. The problem with Grace is that it has repeatedly been involved with environmental controversies. What would have happened if a company had dumped legally but later openly admitted that it had done so and began the process of cleanup and making ammends? Sometimes telling the truth engenders as much punishment as not telling the truth. Under these circumstances, why would anyone come forward? Why does chemical irresponsibility occur at all... are the disposal costs in removal and employee time in properly resolving the disposal that injurious to the bottom line? Don't most of us also share in environmental lapses? If you have ever changed your car's oil or antifreeze, most likely you have polluted inadvertently as the fluid hits the ground.
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Summary: No John Grisham
Review: Jan Schlichtmann a lawyer to whom money isn't important! Yeah Right. Anyway, I listened to this audio book and found it to be slow, and fairly uninteresting. It certainly made me thankful that I didn't waste my money on the movie version of this book. If you like legal fiction, don't waste your time or money on this book. Stick with John Grisham and if you have this book, please don't insult Mr. Grisham by placing it on the same shelf as any of his. Mr. Harr, sorry but this was my first and most likely my last of yours.
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Summary: Makes you think
Review: I actually own two copies of this book...the one I bought several years ago to read over the summer, and the one I bought as part of my first year "box of books" when I started law school. While the contents of the other books in that box might be more useful on the bar exam, the contents of this book will continue to make me think about the profession I have chosen for many years to come. We used this book in my Civ Pro class to illustrate the various stages of a lawsuit. While Harr's detailed descriptions of each stage certainly helped to illuminate the my dry textbook pages, I was disappointed that we never talked about what I deemed to be the most important lesson of the book: the power of lawyers and money in our society. After finishing this book I couldn't help but think of the number of other stories, similar to the Woburn case, that have never been told, not for a lack of trying, or for a lack of legal sophistication, but simply for a lack of money. Sure Schlichtmann was an extravagant lawyer, but a case like this one couldn't have been pulled off without millions. And yet we do nothing to make justice more accessible in cases such as these. This book constantly makes me ponder a question posed to my class on our first day of law school: do we really have a right if there's no way to enforce it? Surely, the unheard victims of Woburn and other cases like it would answer no.
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