12 - Now You See It, Now You Don't: Cause Lawyering, Popular Culture, and A Civil Action

Summary

Introduction

Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action is a subtle, complex, and compelling book that nonetheless can be briefly summarized. Two corporations have engaged in dumping toxic waste that has leeched into the wells that supply water to Woburn, Massachusetts. The pollutants included a known carcinogen, TCE, and the pollution has been connected by scientific research at Harvard University to a number of health problems – although not directly to the chronic myelogenous leukemia clusters that are at issue in the Woburn civil litigation. The book recounts the ultimately futile efforts of a small-time, distinctly lower hemisphere lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to represent the families of the leukemia victims in a class action lawsuit against the W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods corporations, which are represented by attorneys who are members in good standing of the lawyering elite of Massachusetts.

Harr's account of the ephemeral triumphs and inexorable collapse of Jan Schlichtmann's legal populism provides a convincing portrait of the intrinsic contingencies of cause lawyering by personal injury attorneys. The objective of this essay is to determine the extent to which the window Harr opens onto this segment of the cause lawyering bar and its class action tactics stays open as his modestly marketable and utterly convincing nonfiction book is repackaged as a popular film, starring John Travolta as Jan Schlichtmann, and then remarketed as a paperback best seller.