THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511210488
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ROSS C. REEVES
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
A CIVIL ACTION
JONATHAN HARR
Random House. 500 pp. $25.
It is an old adage among lawyers that hard cases make bad law. Recent experiences in the civil and criminal courts - from Dow Corning to O.J. Simpson - have proved a corollary: Big cases overwhelm the legal system and marginalize justice.
Jonathan Harr has written a masterful account of an epic ``big case'' - a legal battle waged against two large corporations accused of polluting water wells of Woburn, Mass., with carcinogens. Recently nominated for the National Book Award for nonfiction, A Civil Action takes the reader on a brilliant tour de force spanning a decade and a half, from the first diagnosis of leukemia among Woburn's children to the trial and final appeal.
A Civil Action centers on the affected families' lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, who rose quickly from the rags of a walk-in practice to the riches of a highly successful career representing plaintiffs in high-stakes personal injury cases. Harr's vivid portrait of Schlichtmann as an honest and talented, albeit mercenary and self-absorbed, trial lawyer puts novelist John Grisham's similar characterizations to shame.
Schlichtmann and his partners dithered for years before agreeing to take on the Woburn case. The potential investment of time and money far exceeded anything they had ever encountered, and the chances of recovery were speculative. The existence of a ``leukemia cluster'' and foul-smelling water did not alone make a case.
Before Schlichtmann could even bring suit, medical experts had to establish that the trace elements found in the water caused the cancers. More important, groundwater and geology experts had to pinpoint the sources of pollution that in turn tainted the wells. Even then the case made sense only if blame could be pinned on ``deep-pocket'' defendants capable of paying any money judgment awarded to the plaintiffs.
Defying his partners and his own common sense, Schlichtmann nevertheless took the case, motivated in large part by the discovery that the likely violators were two industrial giants. But deep-pocket defendants can afford to put up a tenacious and spirited defense, turning litigation into trench warfare. A Civil Action hits full stride as it chronicles what became a decade-long case, pitting scores of experts against one another in a battle for hundreds of millions of dollars in actual and punitive damages.
Schlichtmann and his partners eventually spent well over $2 million of their own money just on out-of-pocket expenses, virtually bankrupting themselves in the process. For its part, the defense spent millions in fees and costs.
And it is here that Harr's account transcends any other nonfiction book about the workings of the law and the inner thoughts and emotions of lawyers. A Civil Action reflects the extraordinary contemporary access he was granted to the participants and to their pretrial discovery depositions, high-pressure settlement negotiations and strategy sessions.
Harr deftly critiques the performances of the lawyers, the judge and the witnesses, remaining careful to confine himself to the observations of the participants themselves. Over the course of the narrative, he subtly reveals the transformation of his subjects, especially Schlichtmann's evolution from cocky arrogance to desperate obsession.
But a good book becomes a great one only if it is well-written, and here Harr again excels. A Civil Action is a page-turner from the opening description of the hapless plight of the leukemia victims to the grim ironies of Schlichtmann's obsession and financial ruin. Unlike fiction, actual litigation often reaches ambiguous conclusions and the Woburn case was no different. When it is all over, the reader is hard-pressed to decide where the truth lay and whether justice was done.
A provocative book invariably invites comparisons to others, and A Civil Action brings to mind a curious collection. Its attention to scientific and technical detail is reminiscent of Tom Clancy's early thrillers. Its ironic and often comic portrayal of events mastering and transforming people is suggestive of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. The insider perspective that Harr brings to bear is similar to Bob Woodward's in The Agenda.
But in the end, Schlichtmann's intensely personalized pursuit of justice evokes Ahab - the paradigm anti-hero - and his relentless pursuit of the white whale. Like Melville's whale, justice eludes easy definition and defies capture. And, like the Pequod crew, those who surround Schlichtmann are borne by his obsession to the brink of destruction. MEMO: Ross C. Reeves is a corporate attorney with Willcox & Savage in
Norfolk. by CNB