Rating: 
Summary: If you're in law school read this!
Review: A fabulous book for two reasons. It chronicles a disaster that is virtually unknown beyond the state of West Virginia. Secondly, it's a great tool for any law student in a Civil Procedure class. Forget about "A Civil Action" or "Erin Brockovich", this book best depicts the struggles of those who suffered, both the victims and the lawyers who fought for the people in the Buffalo Creek region.
Rating:
Summary: If you're in law school read this!
Review: A fabulous book for two reasons. It chronicles a disaster that is virtually unknown beyond the state of West Virginia. Secondly, it's a great tool for any law student in a Civil Procedure class. Forget about "A Civil Action" or "Erin Brockovich", this book best depicts the struggles of those who suffered, both the victims and the lawyers who fought for the people in the Buffalo Creek region.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing example of how the system can work.
Review: A great story of how a lawyer out-witted and was ultimately victorious over the corrupt and intimidating system of coal company dominance in West Virginia.
Rating:
Summary: True life...
Review: I was assigned this book by my Judicial Processes proffessor. I think this book gives a good overview of what a case involves and anyone thinking about being a trial lawyer or even law school should read it. It stresses the importance of research and even which court to file in. It takes the reader through the many problems that Stern has to deal with and shows how he and his team solved them. Also, it gives a good look into the adversarial system and how attorneys work within it.
But there is more to this story than just seeing the law process in action, there is the human element. We see the people that were hurt in the coal mining disaster and how much hardship they went through during the disaster and then afterward when dealing with the corporation and their loss. It is a very interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Lawyering down in the pits
Review: Jerry Stern's account of the litigation over the Buffalo Creek dam disaster ought to be read by every wannabe trial lawyer so that he or she will understand the tremendous creativity real lawyering, particularly lawyering down in the pits, requires.The real practice of law requires vision and courage, which this book amply illustrates. Stern and his team from Arnold and Porter took on the near impossible case, armed only with the real tools of our trade, the words and ideas that form the arguments that shape the law. And yet this is not just the story of courageous plaintiffs' lawyers, it is about the truly great defense lawyers on the other side, in particular Zane Grey Staker, whose tenacity and command of the language and of his case, gave the A & P lawyers a great and fair fight, and of the United States District Judge, whose role was not only to provide each side with "the cold neutrality of an impartial judge" but who understood that proper case management plays a critical role in achieving substantial justice.
Rating:
Summary: There Are Good Attorneys . . .
Review: My Civil Proceedure Prof. assigned this to us over Christmas Break so we could become familiar with "piercing the corporate veil", which merely refers to the rare legal opportunity to cut through a corporation's legal armour and attack some of the meat and money, i.e. personal assets of the officers. This only happens when there is extreme wrong doing by those suits running the business, and if you want to know what extreme worngdoing is, this is the book that will lay it out for you, pretty as a penny.
I have to admit, I was dreading reading this book, as the holidays were a sweet time to escape the stressful activities of law school. So when "Harold", our WonderBread/uptight, D.C., in the process of divorce, Napoleonic law professor assigned this reading, I was not too thrilled.
But once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down. This is the story that makes good people want to become good lawyers.
The story is about a coal mining disaster, a preventable, mind-reeling, man-made disaster and how a dedicated attorney wades through the litigation process, extracting painful stories from the survivors, and skillfully uses hard work, pit bull clenched determination, the legal system and a little luck to persevere over a greedy, thoughtless, and culpable corporation. I hope those guys fighting Enron read this.
A great read, even if you have no legal aspirations and like a good, meaty story with a real-life happy ending.
Rating: 
Summary: True legal drama that reads like fiction
Review: Sympathetic, descriptive, heart-wrenching, sweet and triumphant. These are the adjectives suitable to describe this novel. It is the true story of the actual Buffalo Creek Disaster and written by the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. It is a candid story of how a community of coal miners banded together and brought suit against a huge coal company and made them pay. Some witness recollections are almost unbearable to read, the depth of description and emotion evoked will bring tears to your eyes. Its a short and enjoyable, and if you are not familiar with legal jargon its novice friendly.
Rating:
Summary: Was Stern as Big a Winner as he Thought?
Review: The premise of Stern's book is - "How the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal-mining history brought suit against the coal company - and won." One of my civil procedure professors required us to read this book before our first year of law school, because it does an excellent job of framing the issues that a lawyer might face. From that standpoint, it serves as a good teaching tool. From a social standpoint, I also believe that the book raises valuable questions about the legal system and whether it promotes corporates interests unless there is a firm like Arnold & Porter that is willing to step in and undertake this type of representation. Too often, there are attorneys who view mass disasters as an opportunity for themselves, rather than as the tragedy that they are for the victims. But, on a professional level, although I think that Mr. Stern did a good job of representing his clients, at the end of the book I wondered whether he was as successful as he thought he was. Certainly, his clients were better off than they had been before his efforts, but given the fact that his law firm earned more than $3 million from his efforts, did his 600+ clients fare as well as he thought?
Rating:
Summary: Was Stern as Big a Winner as he Thought?
Review: The premise of Stern's book is - "How the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal-mining history brought suit against the coal company - and won." One of my civil procedure professors required us to read this book before our first year of law school, because it does an excellent job of framing the issues that a lawyer might face. From that standpoint, it serves as a good teaching tool. From a social standpoint, I also believe that the book raises valuable questions about the legal system and whether it promotes corporates interests unless there is a firm like Arnold & Porter that is willing to step in and undertake this type of representation. Too often, there are attorneys who view mass disasters as an opportunity for themselves, rather than as the tragedy that they are for the victims. But, on a professional level, although I think that Mr. Stern did a good job of representing his clients, at the end of the book I wondered whether he was as successful as he thought he was. Certainly, his clients were better off than they had been before his efforts, but given the fact that his law firm earned more than $3 million from his efforts, did his 600+ clients fare as well as he thought?
Rating:
Summary: great!
Review: This is a must read for any student of the Environmental Studies, any Eco-activist, or just anyone who cares about the health of the environment. This book, while it did not focus on the areas of pollution, it did show what can come about from our country's ever increasing demand for fossil fuels. And how over 100 people paid the ultimate price for that demand.
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