A Civil Action

Rating:
Summary: The Gauntlet
Review: If you want to know what it might have been like growing up in the aftermath of this case, here is an example... You are born and it is detected that something is wrong with you requiring hospitalization. It is the early 1960s and a small group of concerned citizens file a suit against the city demanding answers on why the water 'smells funny'. You are shipped off to a hospital where no family members visit and no family history is known. You are just some toddler brought in for treatment. Years later you are released, and everyone you come into contact with hates you. You are beaten, perhaps molested, ridiculed , humiliated and told that you and your family are no good and what a burden it is to feed and clothe you. You are not even sure who your family is. You have no mother and no father and in their place are only persons paid for their services who discard you when it becomes too troublesome. You are crippled and recovering ,hated,alone and afraid. This goes on for years. Eventually you are sent to a program where you break boulders with sledgehammers, dig and do work sometimes 12-15 hours,day and night ;again being told how bad you are. Your crime? You have no family. You want an education so you " make something of yourself " and professionals strongly recommend you go to college early but no one listens... you are a despicable human being after all. Perhaps a decade later you go to work for a company bought out by one of the companies in this book. You know nothing about the company or its history with Woburn. You work hard looking to build a future and after a year or so a manager tells you you have no future with the company unless you take a dead end position at another division. For half a decade this proves true. You work ,study and volunteer and still you are a despicable human being. There are but a handful who have taken the time to build your trust and who understand your life. You hold them dear for decades. Then 1995 comes and a new book is coming out about some kids who died of cancer and tainted water. You recall some high school acquaintances who had lost relatives and you are now in a position to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. The sorrow of those families touches you and you will do whatever you can to see this does not happen as long as it is in your power to prevent it. You do not even connect your own childhood hospitalization, being crippled and years of recovery to this case, for the few people you trust who knew you decades before told you you had something else. Suddenly your whole life is turned over and these trusted people in your life grow anxious or angry or afraid, treating you with derision where you thought they cared about you. The whole platform of your relationship is a ship on a so very stormy sea. For a brief time you were not so hated but with this book it all came back again and if only you knew why. You are no longer the person who worked 4 jobs or worked 2-3 jobs while taking a full college courseload, the person who volunteered for years because they wanted to make the community a little better place with some great people, or the caring friend. You learn that the people in your life that made you feel like not such a repugnant person have roots that go back to the web of economic,political, business and social intrigue that makes this such a complex case. You have become a pariah to your former employer, a bastard employee and your reputation among employers in the region assures you no work.You learn this as you go searching one employer to the next first full of promise and later desperation as you are told to wipe away decades of work history and pretend you are just starting out, or with a passing hint: " ..I wouldn't list THAT company if i were you!". As a future as hopeful as a supercell looming on the horizon awaits you, you wonder if there are any more like you out there searching for answers.

Rating:
Summary: Story behind the story
Review: About a year or so before this book was released, an individual i know had a story done on their search for their father in one of the local papers around Woburn. About a year or so later, Whitey Bulger disappeared and the individual was dismissed from their position at one of the 2 primary companies in this book. Two years prior to this book's release, the individual had been called in by management of the company and told they better take such and such a position within the company or " your career in this division or any other of the company is dead in the water" and later called in for a meeting with alleged government officials and warned " we will be monitoring you".

After being suddenly fired while doing 'an excellent job', the individual's medical records began disappearing right back to the time of birth and at several hospitals featured in this book. The child was hospitalized for a long time as a toddler and shuffled around as a ward of the state of Massachusetts. As the individual made inquiries into their family history in an effort to understand why all sorts of fallout was coming down on them, individuals they had known for many years began acting anxious, aloof, and stressed ' apparently there are still some issues.." when asked about whether the individual was one of the kids afflicted by cancer and received experimental treatments as an infant and followed up in the Woburn area.The individual sent certified letters to Robert Redford in Utah, Jan Schlictmann at Tom Kiley's office in Andover,Mass and none of the letters was delivered nor a return receipt sent back nor did the local post office express any interest in following up on the certified letters, as if a mail cover was instituted. Phone calls were not returned. In the early phases of the Bulger case, Redford and Sylvester Stallone were alleged to have appeared in Somerville court (regional newspaper to best of my knowledge) for indeterminate reasons. The more this individual asked if they were a cancer victim and if this might explain the sudden harassment and hostility, the more intense these things became. Some questions emerged in all this as well.

One of the companies in the book acquired a company right beside the company Ann Anderson worked for, General Aluminum. That company is said to have looked at buying the vacated General Aluminum facility.

In the early phases of the epidemic there was a sharp rise in medical payments made by the Welfare dept as families, broke and unable to afford care, resorted to welfare to acquire treatment in Boston and area hospitals. Later, the city budget came under heavy fire and the dept of welfare was closed to audits, leaving significant amounts of expenditures via the dept of welfare unexplained and untouchable.Where did the money come from to augment the heavy payments and why were the books closed to audit this public agency? Why would Redford, Schlictmann avoid any contact with an adult trying to learn if they were one of the kids in the epidemic? Why would an individual's medical records suddenly become unavailable and state and state subcontractor records be sanitized on publication of this book? Were government agencies roadblocking this individual's attempt to find out the truth about their past? Has the individual to this day been a target because they simply asked " who is my father?" The individual was even monitored using school computers to contact people for more information by uniformed Unicco personnel retained by the school and which has a government division and may provide services to one of the companies in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Great summer with "A Civil Action"
Review: I started this book as a school assignment, but soon I fall in love with this book. This book was one of the books that actually made me interested. The book was very realistic and detailed that I could even feel the suspense and the tensions in the court. All the works that lawyers do in order to prepare for the trial are vividly described. Also the real life of a lawyer and the people who work for him comes as a human story. Although the ending was the opposite of my prediction, I had a great summer time with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Veiled in secrecy
Review: About the time this book came out, if you had been researching the local history you may have been watched at the local library. Information about the deaths of some of the children in the obituaries were conspicuously missing and at least one person i know of received a great deal of harassment over inquiring about their past as a sick child in Woburn and who may have been one of the first children affected by the epidemic. The harassment came in the form of strangers and longtime associates, as if there is something major covered up about Woburn of the 1960s or involving some key players in the beginning.

While discussing the case at a local restaurant you might also have been watched, as it appeared there were official- looking men monitoring the pulse of the local community on this book release.

A question that might arise is if you were a very young child in Woburn in the 1960s and crippled and prior to this book being released you came under heavy fire for reasons unknown, would you be suspicious something was going on,especially if your family history was all but completely withheld from you? If the harassment came from individuals you barely knew or knew not at all with roots back to the general area, would this concern you? And how would you feel if someone out there might have some answers but refused to come forward, leaving you as a lone target?

Rating:
Summary: Definitely needed to be told
Review: I know of someone who was fired suddenly after this book was released. Since then, the person has sent out 40,000+ resumes over 6+ years and is being forced into homelessness and bankruptcy in Massachusetts. This person came under heavy fire as it was suggested the person had something to do about the book but was unaware it was even coming out.

Rating:
Summary: Daily Life of a Personal Injury Lawyer Accurately Told
Review: Being a lawyer myself, I may have focused on a different aspect of this book than other readers did. The continually fascinating depiction in this book was that of the personality of the personal injury lawyer in America. He (or she) is a very different type of person than other lawyers. There is the element of the Las Vegas high roller that surrounds this person. Although he can be in the lap of luxury one moment, not too far down the road he may also find himself a recently decreed bankrupt, as this lawyer found himself. It is in the nature of the beast. He works high profile cases where he is only paid if he wins that high profile case. Nonetheless, he needs a constant bankroll of money to fund the carrying of these cases since he has to pay the expert witnesses and everyone else in bringing in a winning verdict. The book shows the protagonist lawyer always on the edge of financial ruin as he tries to move forward in a case for families who lost their children to a strange form of leukemia due to industrial pollution by a corporation. He is unbelievably dedicated to seeing this case through whereas most normal people, would have thrown in the towel early on with the obstacles he faces. If you have ever wondered what the life of a personal injury lawyer is really like, this book will answer your questions. I read the book years before seeing the movie and I am glad. The movie is a very superficial treatment that concentrates almost all of its energies on the unfolding case and very little on the personality of the personal injury lawyer.

Rating:
Summary: Point of impact
Review: I remember living in Woburn during the times when the earliest signs of epidemic emerged. We lived in a poor area in one of the worse parts of Woburn before moving around.I was a handicapped child,newly emerged from a long hospital stay and had to take weekly trips into Boston for checkups and treatments.

I remember people throwing rocks through our windows, paint on the back door, and nights of terror where we lived. I was bounced into state child care and suddenly just after this book came out, my life became a living hell. I lost most everything, was treated hostilely by the local medical community, had my medical records disappeared and became a target of attacks of the sort of viciousness i remember living in the subsidized housing in Woburn. I remembered having to appear in court as a young child and when i went back to the Woburn court 25 years later, could see nothing of the records concerning my court appearance, with no reason ever given. Some town personnel records from my early years in Woburn had been destroyed and 'friends' i had known for up to 20 yrs with ongoing ties to Woburn turned on me in derision. It was like i suddenly became a target of hate for being a handicapped boy who may have been one of the earliest cases in Woburn and never known it.

I began wondering if there were other kids out there like me from those days early in the epidemic who had experienced similar abuse. As more and more acts of hate were thrown at me i wondered how anyone could hold an infant responsible for what went on in Woburn.

I suddenly became unemployable in Massachusetts and my life prior to the introduction of this book has been destroyed in almost every respect.

Rating:
Summary: A small victory for the people of Woburn
Review: This book left me with two very strong feelings:

First, I felt quite sickened and discouraged to learn in great detail just how easy it is for big business to skirt responsibility for committing such heinous and reckless acts as W.R. Grace and Beatrice so obviously did. This book is a brilliant illustration of how the system fails us. (Although, I must admit, I'm not 100% convinced that Schlictmann wasn't at least partly to blame. I think the big payoff was his ultimate motivation-and his greed was, finally, his downfall.)

I also felt amazed at how Harr was able to create such excitement around every motion filed, deposition taken and objection sustained or overruled. It was as compelling as any thriller I've ever read. I'm no legal expert, but I can see how this book would be extremely useful to any first-year law student. Harr's research is impeccable; he really brought the most minute legal and technical details to light in a straightforward and reasonably objective manner.

In closing, while W.R. Grace and Beatrice sleazed their way through this debacle without having to admit guilt, the Woburn families affected by this tragedy can feel somewhat vindicated in that anyone who reads A CIVIL ACTION will surely be convinced that Grace and Beatrice are truly at fault.

Rating:
Summary: interesting, but badly flawed
Review: This interesting, but badly flawed, book provides an in-depth look at one "civil action"; a lawsuit by citizens of Woburn, MA against W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods, which alleged that TCE (trichloroethylene) dumping at sites owned by the companies contaminated two town wells and caused leukemia in local children.

The entire nation has spent the past decade gripped by one blockbuster case after another (OJ, the Nanny, Monicagate) and having read hundreds of cases in Law School & dozens of legal thrillers & watched numerous trials on Court TV, I can confidently state that the legal system is a unique generator of human drama. There are always good guys and bad guys, victims & perpetrators, oddball lawyers, brilliant jurists, arcane legal machinations, big bucks prizes or maybe a death sentence, and so on. So what A Civil Action cried out for was something to separate it from the pack. Why should this one case interest us? What lessons can it teach?

Sadly, Jonathan Harr does not step up to the plate & accept this challenge. He has provided an excellent narrative of the events in a complex case, filled with human drama, but he conspicuously fails to put it all in context. Here are some of the issues he should have analyzed:

1) The Big Enchilada: should the case ever have been allowed to go forward in the first place?

Let me just start by saying that the behavior of the corporations in Woburn was reprehensible & they should be subject to criminal & civil prosecution for dumping & for attempting to cover up their dumping. However, the case that Schlichtmann & Co. brought alleged that the dumping had specifically caused leukemia.

As Dan Kennedy, a journalist who has written extensively about the case & been quite sympathetic to the plaintiffs, said in a 1998 story for the Boston Phoenix: "The scientific state of the art was (and still is) probably too primitive to allow him to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Beatrice and Grace were at least partly responsible for contaminating Wells G and H, and that the contaminants, in turn, caused leukemia and other illnesses."

Or, as renowned quack-science debunker Michael Fumento stated in Forbes: "In 1982, when Schlichtmann sued Grace, information on the solvent TCE was relatively sketchy. Now we have the results of numerous rodent studies in which the animals were dosed with thousands of times the amount of chemical that humans might receive in their drinking water. Of the 35 rodent studies in the Carcinogenic Potency Database developed by U.C. Berkeley biologist Lois Swirsky Gold, none has found a TCE-leukemia connection."

In light of the impossibility of establishing a link between TCE and the leukemia cases, it seems obvious that Judge Skinner should have granted the Rule 11 motion that Beatrice Foods brought & should have sanctioned Schlichtmann for bringing a frivolous suit.

This case was simply not the appropriate vehicle for punishing Grace & Beatrice & vindicating justice.

2) Is a jury capable of dealing with the technical issues raised in such a case & is it appropriate to have a jury deal with the emotional issues raised?

The section of the book on the jury deliberations was especially troubling. The level of confusion displayed throughout the trial by even expert witnesses raises the question whether anyone actually understood what was going on, but the jury clearly had no idea what they were supposed to be doing & ended up rendering a thoroughly confusing verdict in the first stage of the trial. If civil cases this complex are to be brought to trial, which they surely will be, it seems that it would make more sense to have them be bench trials or to appoint Special Masters with the technical background to decide the fact issues.

Luckily we were spared the spectacle of the second portion of the trial, where Schlichtmann would have paraded "victims" before the jury in an attempt to win a big money judgment. Of course, it is a horrible thing when any child develops leukemia. And if there's a local polluter, it's tempting to want to make them pay, but it may not, & in this case would not, be in the best interests of justice to do so.

3) How can we tolerate a legal system which allows the contemptible behavior of virtually every character involved in this trial?

To give just a few examples, & assuming Harr's portrayals are accurate:

Beyond the issue of their continual time-wasting objections and unwarranted motions, it seems clear that the defense parties & attorneys hid evidence from Schlichtmann during discovery.

Schlichtmann appears to have been completely irresponsible in ending pre-trial settlement negotiations with Beatrice Foods.

The judge appears to have allowed his personal feelings about the genuinely annoying Schlichtmann to influence how he handled motions and objections.

Anne Anderson, and a couple other plaintiffs, appear to have been petty, greedy & ungrateful in challenging Schlichtmann's billing after the settlement.

Then there's the attorney who sought a referral fee & Trial Lawyers for Public Justice which sought 800k after bailing from the case.

& people ask me why I don't choose to practice law?

Finally, I have one major problem with the manner in which Harr produced his story. At the end of the book he reveals to the reader that he had virtually continual access to Schlichtmann & company during the trial & only afterward assembled the defense's side. As an initial matter, it seems to me that he should have told us this at the outset. And the reason for this brings up the larger issue; in a case that was as emotionally compelling as this one was, dead kids, bankrupt plaintiff's lawyers, etc.., is it even reasonable to believe that Harr's account is impartial. Shouldn't we assume that someone who was that close to the plaintiff's side throughout would develop some emotional investment in their case?

Ultimately, while I enjoyed the book, I found it's lack of analysis a major flaw and I think that it's greatest value lies in it's exposure of the pathologies that plague the American legal system.

GRADE: C+

Rating:
Summary: Taking matters into our hands
Review: The Federal Register and your State Register is a daily compilation of proposed changes and changes for each government agency. Prior to regulations being passed,a Request For Comment(RFC) is issued in the Registers detailing an address,contact name and phone number for someone to contact regarding issues,questions or suggestions relative to the proposed change that the public can respond to. Once the full process has been completed,these proposed regulations become part of what as known as the Code of Federal Regulations(CFR)-- once in the CFR, it becomes very, very difficult to change it.

As citizens and as business people we need to accept some measure of responsibility in following these changes and participating in their design so that they can protect the public interest while being sensitive to feasible implementation in the business community. One problem is that these Registers are difficult to obtain,can be quite technical in nature and the individual may struggle to understand their sometimes cryptic language.

Another issue is whether greed plays a part in disposal of chemicals. Some news show guests have suggested a giant hole be built in say a rural part of the Nevada desert in which all refuse is thrown but that local landfills and other such waste companies might lose big money behind this.

One question we might never know in this case is whether local business interests had any part in the timing of the announcement that the polluted wells were to be closed. This is not just a question in this case but all over the world.

As consumers we also need to accept that our demand for the products which were made using these harmful pollutants fueled creation of those pollutants. How these pollutants have been handled is another matter.

Grace and the tanneries may have had their part, but Grace and Beatrice have been the only 2 companies to accept responsibility for their part publicly. Beatrice inherited the responsibility when it bought the Riley tannery. Many more companies in the area which may have had a part have not publicly acknowledged this. The beginning of this case predated the EPA but there may have been some state authority under the Slichter Act to stop activities that contributed to this tragedy stemming from the case of Bonanno v. Carmen which is said to have formed the basis of the Slichter Act in the 1940s. This act was designed to promote the public safety. Perhaps cases like this formed the foundation for RCRA,the congressional act effectively giving a mission statement to EPA. The pollutants may have been particularly difficult to track because of underground aquifers and springs that fed the Aberjona River or Horn Pond.And if we delve deeply, the pollution was far more widespread than just the wells mentioned here.The scope of the problem might be found in the swelling Dept of Welfare medical costs in the region.Perhaps local management was simply doing the best they could in a difficult situation without panicking residents and scaring away business unnecessarily.