A Civil Action by Jonathon Harr

Reviewed by Gerti

It’s been quite a week for the legal profession in my house. First I finished Jonathon Harr’s “A Civil Action” and then watched Charles Dickens “Bleak House.” Together, those stories would convince any sane person to stay out of court, no matter what the personal cost!

The eponymous civil action in the Harr chronicle (which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction) involves the deaths of several children in Woburn, MA, ostensibly caused by chemical pollution of the water wells while they were growing up. One mother begins to question why her child has leukemia, and links it to the news that two wells have been taken off line. While medical doctors still claim no one knows what causes leukemia, this mom finds it astonishing that half a dozen children in her neighborhood have the disease. She gets a Boston law firm involved, and that’s when the fireworks start.

The story is mostly about attorney Jan Schlichtmann, a personal injury lawyer living the high life until this case begins to obsess him. He sees Beatrice Foods and another multinational corporation called W.R. Grace behind the water pollution, and thinks his firm will bring in millions for the plaintiffs. Instead, he gets embroiled in a case where the judge (Judge Skinner) is Harvard friends with one of the attorneys for the defense, and when that attorney tells Schlichtmann during the deposition phase that the families will never get to tell their stories on the stand, he’s right. Judge Skinner rules that before the families can testify, Schlichtmann and his firm have to prove that the wells were contaminated by the defendants. It turns what should have been a heart-breaking case of human health and happiness versus evil companies who are trying to make a profit, into a courtroom ecology lesson. Needless to say, the jurors let Beatrice, the company of the judge’s friend, off without a fine, and the case goes on only against W.R. Grace.

When Grace is finally found to have caused the well pollution, the settlement is so tiny the families are left with about $300K each and without the apology and acknowledgement of guilt they were initially seeking. But bringing the case to trial at all costs Schlichtmann and his law firm everything – they are nearly bankrupted by the medical and geological tests they needed to prove to the judge they had a case at all. When it’s discovered that the defendants didn’t provide all the documents they should have to the plaintiffs, the case goes to appeal – but even then there is no justice. The appeals judges send the case back to the already corrupt and fallible Judge Skinner, and he does nothing good.

“A Civil Action” is a brilliantly researched and written story about very bad people and a justice system that has anything but justice in mind. It terrifies me to think of all the pollution that exists in our water and in our soil, and only reaffirms that those people most responsible for ruining our environment never have to pay.