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Title: A Civil Action by John Shea, Jonathan Harr ISBN: 0-679-44561-7 Publisher: Random House Audio Pub. Date: 29 August, 1995 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 4 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (296 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent.
Comment: This is a very well-written account of a lawsuit filed by eight families in Woburn, MA against two large corporations that they believed contaminated their drinking water with carcinogens, leading to the deaths of several children from leukemia.
The characters are at least as vivid as any in fiction, and the story is detailed in its coverage of the legal maneuvering and the law itself. (Some people may find this boring, but it is integral to the plot, and to me it was interesting.) At the outset of the book, I had trouble believing that I would be sympathetic to an extravagant personal injury lawyer operating in the go-go eighties, but the author does such a good job of portraying Jan Schlichtmann, the counsel for the plaintiffs, that you share his exhaustion by the end of the book.
"A Civil Action" is a vivid example of the differences between justice and law, and it may well leave you outraged. It is, in any case, a very solid read.
Rating: 5
Summary: A definite page-turner!
Comment: I don't know why this book isn't on the New York Times bestseller list. There can be only one reason it's not there; the word isn't out YET. If you're a John Grisham fan, you'll treasure this read AND it's a true story!
The author spent eight years following this case that began with a cluster of leukemia cases that popped up in Woburn, Massachusetts in the late seventies. The plaintiffs think the illnesses came from a contamination of the drinking water with TCE, trichloroethylene. Not much more can be said without giving away the resolution, but along the way you'll be amazed (and furious) at the personalities; the federal judge, the young, cocky, self-assured plaintiffs' attorney, Joel Schlichtmann, and his powerful adversaries, the attorneys for the big-monied corporate defendants.
The author effectively draws you into the story with his perceptive prose and his clear understanding of the legal subtleties involved. He knows just where to pick you up and drop you off, chapter by chapter. Don't miss this one, but beware, once you start reading, you'll be hooked
Rating: 4
Summary: Unknown soldier
Comment: Jan Schlictmann, Anne Anderson, the Gamaches and all of the families in this book and beyond are not the only ones who were seriously impacted by this case. Look at what happened to 'GK ', a longtime former Woburn resident who was forced to leave Massachusetts under questionable circumstances...
GK was a small child in Woburn in the 1960s. Bounced from family to family,handicapped, abused and severely neglected, GK had been treated out of state for years,living in a hospital with no visitors with a suspicious diagnosis prior to coming
back to Woburn.From then he was treated at the same hospitals,lived in the same neighborhoods as the families mentioned in this book, appeared in Woburn district court, where the first complaints of water problems emerged and which file was later refused his review without reason. When this book came out, GK worked for Grace Co. in Cambridge,Mass. and was suddenly discharged even though an excellent job is said to have been done. Medical records began disappearing without explanation from the hospitals the cancer-diagnosed children were treated in, and a former guardian who had arranged for his new social security number began acting suspiciously.
Symptoms of extreme monitoring and control began showing themselves, as GK became a target of increased audits, questionable activity at banks such as Fleet and Citizens, phone and communications tampering, threatening phone calls and being put under surveillance (including a possible FBI agent out of Tennessee, where Barry Mawn worked- Mawn is a Woburn native). Some speculated that mistaken identity had occurred, others that the federal government was waging war on a young child who simply put, survived a real tragedy in Woburn,Mass. Others speculated that a long term goal of erasing GK's existence was underway, propelled by Harr's book and a prior newspaper article detailing GK's search for his family roots.
In the 1980s GK worked for a small service firm allegedly under the control of a New Jersey parent entity. This company routinely dumped toxic chemicals on the ground in Woburn and when GK objected to the policy, GK was forced to resign or be fired. Four to six years later, a man bearing the name of the sole officer of the parent to the service firm out of New Jersey was introduced to GK by a mutual friend. Subsequent research by GK many years later revealed that his 'friend' bore the same name as the chief officer of the parent company and lived in Massachusetts just as that executive allegedly did. This 'friend' suddenly became quite hostile when Harr's book came out and blamed GK for 'turning' on Grace Co. Additionally, the 'friend' introduced GK to an alleged private investigator linked to a Reading,Mass attorney who later transferred to a Winchester,Mass firm(Winchester was impacted by the Aberjona River) friend ostensibly to help GK figure out what was going on. This investigator it was later learned had ties to a private school in Woburn taught by a nun probably linked to the boy.
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Title: A Documentary Companion to A Civil Action (Revised Edition) by Lewis A. Grossman, Robert G. Vaughn, Jonathan Civil Action Harr, Samuel I. Zeveloff ISBN: 158778422X Publisher: Foundation Press Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Buffalo Creek Disaster : How the survivors of one of the worst disasters in coal-mining history broughtsuit against the coal company--and won by Gerald M. Stern ISBN: 0394723430 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 12 February, 1977 List Price(USD): $10.20 |
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Title: Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis ISBN: 0679723129 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 23 April, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: One L : The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow ISBN: 0446673781 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams by Richard Michael Fischl, Jeremy R. Paul ISBN: 0890897603 Publisher: Carolina Academic Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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