Review: 'A Civil Action' by Jonathan Harr

Beyond A Civil Action--W.R. Grace & Co.'s Response

In 1997 I picked up A Civil Action on a lark because the cover looked interesting. The tag line on the front from a review claimed it was "the legal thriller of the decade." It certainly intrigued me.

Well, I wasn't able to put the book down once I cracked open the cover. From page one I was drawn into the life of Jan Schlichtmann, a young hotshot lawyer from Boston who took on the unwinnable case of proving that two companies unwittingly created a toxic town that became a leukemia cluster after many children died from the disease.

But while I was touched by Schlichtmann's determination to take on a case that no one else wanted to touch, I was also touched by the families who lost their children. They didn't care about money, they just wanted the companies to admit they dumped toxic chemicals in the water, and that they were to blame for the illness of the town's children. Obviously these parents were tormented daily as more kids were diagnosed with leukemia. This alone made me wish that things had turned out differently.

In the film version of the book, Schlichtmann is portayed as a valiant man with no faults, but the book points out that Schlichtmann, in his bravado, made some mistakes along the way. The companies were willing to settle for $8 million, but Schlichtmann refused. In my mind, the settlement was the same as admitting some guilt on behalf of the companies, but the lawyer felt it was more important to beat Big Business, no matter how difficult it would be to do.

As the story progresses, Harr takes the reader right along with those involved. When Schlichtmann's law firm employees begin using their personal assets to pay for the case, it made me want to dig into my own pockets to help fund it. Truly you feel it is a noble cause as you flip through the pages.

This book is great because it not only teaches you the intricacy of the legal system, but it's also a great action book in that there is never a dull moment. Harr takes great pains to show the reader that this case was not typical, and that there was nothing dull about it--I would have loved to be on that jury if only to see the amazing dynamics as outlined in A Civil Action.

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