Rating: 
Summary: Injustice prevails
Review: I know a person who worked for Grace Corp.,one of its defense subsidiaries in Woburn, who was told they had been extensively investigated by the Justice Dept and FBI to work there.When this person requested their record with these agencies, both branches refused to provide copies or access to it.This person was forced to sign an agreement with the U.S. government not to file bankruptcy in the future or lose the job and all benefits. In 1995 when this book came out the person's medical records disappeared and the person became a victim of financial and character assassination, as if forcing the individual to violate this agreement and file bankruptcy anyway because they had no choice. Later, individuals alleging business linkage to this Grace subsidiary in Woburn and family or friendship ties to the FBI branches in Boston and surrounding areas began an intimidation campaign against this person. This person had worked as a safety and/or environmental person with Grace corp, and been ousted under hostile and questionable circumstances and later blackballed in work references.Today the person is homeless and joblessand has been ruined in almost every way imaginable.Jan Schlictmann paid a price but this individual paid a higher one.
Rating:
Summary: Postscript
Review: WR Grace hailed TIAA-CREF,the academic world's largest private pension fund and a majority shareholder in Grace. On the board were also Alan Fiers of the CIA and Zbignew Brezinski, former NSA chief as well as Peter Lynch of Fidelity Investments. Jan Schlictmann has lost most if not all of any proceeds from this case to Cadle Co. after the Boston Trade Bank failed. Grace is/was a company very politically connected who hired former government officials, such as from EPA or OSHA,etc. Many more families than just the ones in this case were affected, including families from the Woburn/Burlington side.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading
Review: It's a cliche that justice belongs to the rich, but this book demonstrates that sometimes money isn't the only factor. People -- to an depressing extent -- are, as the expression goes, only human. The amount of dishonesty and self-deception -- only blatant in the last hundred pages or so -- is thoroughly disheartening. I can only hope that Skinner, Facher, Jacobs, Riley, and a few others read this book with shame and humiliation; but I imagine that they only read it with anger and indignation. The true crime in my mind, however, is that this type of mockery of justice -- the human error of refusing to own up to your own mistakes -- probably occurred during the 2000 presidential elections. Reading this book now, I would have hoped that we, as a society, had learned something. We apparently didn't, which makes it even more important for more people to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Give it six stars
Review: This is quite simply the most engrossing work of non-fiction I've read in a decade. If I were teaching a creative writing class I would begin with Harr's book. A terrific story (environmental outrage), a compelling character (obsessive lawyer), full of conflict, wonderful set pieces, and even echoes of Greek tragedy. If only there were a sequel, but that doesn't happen in non-fiction. Does it?
Rating:
Summary: Very Compelling Story and a Lesson About Lawyers
Review: I immensely enjoyed A Civil Action. The depiction of lawyer Jan Schlichtmann's comprehensive immersion in the Woburn case was stunningly compelling. By the time I finished the book, a part of me was as exhausted as Schlichtmann must have been. However, I have a couple of criticisms: Immediately after Jan sought out Charles Nesson to assist in the battle against Judge Skinner, the author observed that the Woburn case had everything Nesson could want in a lawsuit, not the lease of which was "the potential for making a great deal of money." And later, just after Jan had discovered the Yankee Environmental Engineering report and brought the matter back to the judge, the author mentioned that "despite his bad humor, (Jerome) Facher looked spry. He'd made a lot of money for his law firm on the Woburn case." Lawyers -- especially the sorts of lawyers who tried the Woburn case, and regardless of how honorable their intentions might be, do not MAKE money. Rather, the GET some of the money that other people have made. Money is a tool of exchange representing the value of that which has been created or produced. Money is MADE by people who bring real value into being, who create wealth. Lawyers, who mostly serve as society's carrion jackals, do not MAKE money. What lawyers do, by means of a lawyer-administered legal system and plenty of sophistic rhetoric, is GET much of the money that society's genuinely productive citizens have actually made. What they truly are is LOOTERS. They see someplace that money has been made, and they determine simply to get, to grab, to grub as much of that money as they possibly can. Consider tobacco, asbestos and silicone implants before you deny that's true. Also, the author made an observation I was gratified to see, on the subject of "truth" in the practice of law. One day after court, Facher said that "the truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit." A major difficulty in dealing with these carrion-jackal lawyers is that the truth becomes irrelevant. Juries deal with "facts," which are pretty much whatever some blood-sucking shyster can (by any conceivable means) convince a jury to believe. Harr's riveting portrayal of the battling experts clearly demonstrated that -- in the end, the contradictory facts presented to the Woburn trial jury all negated each other, leaving the jury simply groping. That why the outcome was what it was. On a side note, it was marvelously appropriate that Charles Nesson, who had been a mediocre undergrad mathematician before changing to law, evolved into a dauntless algebraic sleuth who at the height of the trial rearranged the Darcy's Law equation to yield an impossible condition in evidence he opposed. It's just a shame to see something as beautiful and true as math being twisted to serve society's carrion-jackal faction, our magnificent money-grubbing trial lawyers. A great book. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Scary and Fascinating
Review: I couldn't put this book down and am glad to have read the first half on a flight to the west coast and the second on the way back. While the environmental details can bog you down in this text, forge ahead and this recounting of actual events chills your sense of contentment. Jonathan Harr does an incredible job of weaving this complex story into sensible story-telling. An award worthy effort.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book for all to read
Review: If you like courtroom dramas, then A Civil Action is a book for you. It deals with courtroom ethics, a community under pressure and a hot-shot young lawyer. Following in John Grisham's footsteps, Jonathan Harr portrays this in a captivating fashion, but this is no work of fiction: it really happened. A Civil Action is the true story of a community: Woburn, Massachusetts, and a neighborhood of people who experience a lot of pain when child after child contract leukemia. Around the time these children are stricken, the city of Woburn had recently opened two new wells to pump water into the homes where all these children lived. Child after child passes away and the parents are grief-stricken. Then they discover that their drinking water is contaminated with TCE, a chemical solvent that has been thought to be a probable carcinogen. They also learn that two companies with large factories are situated near from the wells and used this solvent and possibly dumped large quantities into the ground, leaving them to leak into the ground-water system and contaminate the water. They get together, have a meeting and hire a lawyer. The lawyer's name is Jan Schlichtmann, a then-prominent young Boston attorney. He spends the next four years and over one million dollars preparing this case for trial. Once it gets there, everything goes downhill. This book is a must read if you are into a fun and exciting read about real life events and the devastating impacts that they have on a community. This book will make you laugh and it will also make you cry. Jonathan Harr has taken a real life event and made it into and award winning book.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, Dramatic; In a Word: Un-Put-Down-Able!
Review: This is a 502 page book that is so good that I read it in four days, having to work all day on three of those days. In fact, I had a hard time putting it down and going to bed last night because I was so anxious to find out what was going to happen.
The book has many virtues. One is the fact that the main character, the lead attorney for the Plaintiffs, Jan Schlichtmann is a strong, powerful, compelling and exciting character. The guy has friggin' presence! He is a force to be reckoned with. And he is driven to win, motivated by good, and smart as hell. Another virtue is that this book helps someone unfamiliar with the legal world to understand how the law works. We get taken through depositions, through expert witnesses, their examination of the grounds of the supposed contamination site, as well as through motions and all kinds of legal maneuverings. A third virtue is that it is quite interesting to follow all the expert testimony, the facts revealed in the deposition, and to try and think through the truth, what really happened, for oneself. A fourth virtue would be that the author goes beyond the case and takes us into the personal lives and personalities of the characters themselves. We learn about Schlichtmann's background, about his 5 year romance during the case with Teresa Padro, about the extreme financial difficulties of Schlictman, Conway and Crowley as the case progressed. This adds the human side to the case.
I can't write enough good things about this book. I learned about the law, I enjoyed following the facts of the case myself, Schlictmann was a likeable character for me, and I badly wanted to find out how things were going to turn out. I don't think this book could have been written any better.
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Rating:
Summary: Very disturbing - in every sense.
Review: You emerge from reading this book with the mixed feeling that Schlichtman's - the plaintiff's attorney - odyssey to obtain compensation for his victims is driven more by his ego than his quest for justice. I say mixed because in the process of so doing Schlichtman drives himself, and in the process his partners, into bankruptcy. That experience leads the reader to believe that there is a zeal at work that transcends money and greed, the very thing that Schlichtman abhors in the companies he sues, but in the end the blindness of ego transcends all: money, deceit, and greed. If Mr. Harr set out to represent Schlichtman as a sympathetic crusader fighting for justice, he failed miserably in doing so. Schlichtman comes across as a man driven by blind ambition with disregard for his victims, his partners, and the judicial process. His personal loss notwithstanding, you end up feeling more sympathetic towards the defendants than the victims. Both companies, W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods demonstrated a desire to resolve the matter, clean up the mess, and compensate the victims. But Schlichman's zeal and vindictiveness obstructed that course that by the time he did obtain some compensation, it was a day late and a dollar short. So much so that a number of the victims ended up feeling that they had been "raped" by Schlichtman. The sad part in this is that Schlichtman started out perhaps with the right motivation but ended up not staying the course, and straying from it, by letting his ambition, rather than his common sense guide him. If there is a moral here it is never trust a lawyer that is not driven by money. I know that it sounds paradoxical, but read Harr's riveting narrative and you will come out feeling the same.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting reading
Review: This is a good novel for anyone who is unfamiliar with civil legal proceedings, but has an interest in them. I haven't seen the movie (and don't care to), but the book held my attention. Though the author could have avoided the PG-13 language he used here and there, he does a good job of weaving a story with the facts of an actual civil environmental case. As someone in that business, I was intrigued by the goings-on he described, and found it hard at times to put the book down.
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