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A Toxic Showdown

How one lawyer took on two waste-dumping conglomerates

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A Civil Action
By Jonathan Harr
Random House; 500 pages; $25 cloth

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Reviewed by Jennifer Davies

Leukemia fells a dozen children in Woburn, a working-class suburb of Boston, and it looks like two megaconglomerates are responsible for contaminating the town's water supply. A young attorney tries to prove the corporations are responsible for the deadly cancer cluster and finds himself drawn into a mammoth legal battle with the corporations' hired guns. It sounds like a Hollywood movie, and not coincidentally, Jonathan Harr's new book, A Civil Action, is scheduled to become one--with no less than Robert Redford directing.

I can only hope, however, that Hollywood's rendition doesn't gloss over the subtlety and details of Harr's extraordinary chronicle of the nine-year struggle to find justice for the leukemia victims' families. As the saying goes, God is in the details, and what makes A Civil Action so compelling is its attention to the details (with the one onerous exception of failing to include an index) and commitment to fairness.

This rare combination makes the true story all the more meaningful and, ultimately, all the more tragic. Considering Congress' recent attempts to gut environmental protections and to "reform" tort law, the book illuminates how hard it is for the ordinary people, and their attorneys, to take on big corporations and win.

The case against Beatrice, a conglomerate that produces everything from Peter Pan peanut butter to Samsonite luggage, and W.R. Grace, a multinational chemical company, was a classic environmental showdown.

The parents of the leukemia victims accused the corporations of dumping toxic waste on its property, which in turn made its way into two of the town's water wells either by seeping into the aquifer or running into the river. Specifically, the families charged that the dumping of trichloroethylene, TCE, a possible carcinogen, had resulted in an abnormally high leukemia rate.

Part legal drama and part human-interest story, the book melds the extensive cast of characters into an riveting tale of environmental justice, or injustice, in America.

Both corporations used a variety of arguments to deflect the families' charges. At first, Beatrice's and Grace's attorneys argued that the companies never used TCE in their plants (later disproved) and even if they had used the chemical, it had been disposed of properly (again disproved, especially in the case of Grace). Finally, they argued, even if TCE had somehow gotten into the water supply, there was no reasonable connection between its presence and the leukemia rates.

Harr reserves judgment, laying out each side's case and the scientific data with care and precision, allowing readers to make their own decisions. Harr also has outdone himself soaking up insights about the participants, whose lives were consumed by the case. He repeatedly quotes the main players referring to the Woburn case as a legal black hole--indeed, it sounds as if Harr, who spent more than eight years researching his book, was sucked in as well.

The book's focal point is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Jan Schlichtmann, a brash, spendthrift lawyer who, prior to the Woburn trial, had never lost a case. Schlichtmann went through $2.6 million, and ran his own law firm and personal finances into deep debt, on the Woburn families' case. But it wasn't merely a bleeding-heart-liberal maneuver. As A Civil Action reveals, it was Schlichtmann's gambling nature and quest for a big cash settlement as much as a quest for justice that spurred him on.

Schlichtmann's relentless drive and bravado hurt his clients' case, particularly his demands for too high a settlement and the childish sparring with the judge. Each of his missteps makes the reader cringe in empathy and frustration. Schlichtmann is like a cocky student who is likable in spite of being enamored with his own intelligence. Teaching him lessons in humility were Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose rulings often seem nonsensical, and Beatrice's counsel, Jerome Facher, a veteran trial attorney and Harvard Law School professor.

Normally, these two characters would be painted in broad strokes as either evil or stupid, but Harr rejects the obvious and renders these characters--especially Facher--both interesting and not unsympathetic. Harr notes at the end of the book that he did not talk to Facher during the trial because he was worried about compromising the competing sides' cases. After the trial, however, Harr went back and did what many journalists forget to do--hear the other side. Facher's seasoned sagacity provides a nice balance to Schlichtmann's histrionic conspiracy theories.

If Schlichtmann supplies the grist for the legal machinations, the plight of the Woburn leukemia victims and their families is the book's soul. The horrific chronology of the Woburn children being diagnosed with leukemia and the reactions of their parents are stomach-turning. Harr weaves the scientific, legal and human elements so skillfully that the feeling of frustration at the final verdict is overpowering.

Unlike a movie, the book lacks a satisfactory conclusion; there is no thrilling victory, no sense of triumph. But on reflection that is what makes A Civil Action stay with the reader--the jagged imperfection of humans struggling to find justice in a system both majestic and full of frailties.

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