Book Review: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr

I recently read a non-fiction book called A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr. It is a a story about the leukemia clusters that had occurred in Woburn, Massachusettes in the 1970's. TCE, or tetrachlorothylene was highly suspected, by the plantiffs, of being the cause of the leukemia and other ailments that had gotten into the local water supply.  This story primarily comes from the point of view of Jan Schlictmann, the lead attorney for the plantiffs.  The author followed Schlictmann and his partners that were involved in the case, and had to refrain from doing so with the defense attorneys, in order to avoid accidentally leaking information to the other side.  In any case, it is a fascinating, though tragic,  to see how an environmental legal case is prepared for and fought for in court.

Schlictmann voraciously prepared for this case and there were several severe challenges in how he was able to prove his case in court, that a tannery company was responsible for dumping TCE into the ground which, in turn managed to get into the local water supplies. At the time, the experts were very much in dispute as to the amount of tce it would take to poison the water supply. Secondly, Schlictmann and his partners had a severe financial crisis that nearly prevented Schlictmann from carrying his case to the very end of the trial. And the third problem was the adversarial relationshipo that Schlictmann had with the judge, which made his case that much more difficult to prove in court.

This was a really fascinating read, although the ending, to me, seems to be a bit anti-climatic, and really shows just how legally complex  environmental issues are and how even experts in their fields can dispute facts and render different outcomes.