"A Civil Action" by Jonathan Harr

Paper Summary:

Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action recounts the story of the action taken by attorney Jan Schlichtmann against the W. R. Grace chemical company and Beatrice Foods on behalf of families in Woburn, Massachusetts whose children had contracted leukemia, the suit claimed, from the ingestion of chemicals, dumped illegally by subsidiaries of the two giant corporations, that entered the wells that supplied a portion of the town. The civil litigation was meant to secure damages for the families but, more importantly, it was intended to "send a message" to large corporations that they could not continue to pollute the environment with reckless disregard for the health and well-being of the people, many of them their own employees, who lived in such areas.

From the Paper:

"Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action recounts the story of the action taken by attorney Jan Schlichtmann against the W. R. Grace chemical company and Beatrice Foods on behalf of families in Woburn, Massachusetts whose children had contracted leukemia, the suit claimed, from the ingestion of chemicals, dumped illegally by subsidiaries of the two giant corporations, that entered the wells that supplied a portion of the town. The civil litigation was meant to secure damages for the families but, more importantly, it was intended to "send a message" to large corporations that they could not continue to pollute the environment with reckless disregard for the health and well-being of the people, many of them their own employees, who lived in such areas. But what seemed like a fairly clear-cut case dragged on for a decade. The large corporations willingly spent millions..."

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