Civil Action: The Woburn Case

In the movie “A Civil Action” Jan Schlichtmann takes on the case of his life as he prepares to take down, deep pockets, Beatrice Co. and Grace Foods. At first Schlichtmann does not see any money in the case and tosses it aside. When he goes to tell the families who lost their children that he can not take the case, Anne Anderson tells him about a tannery in the woods behind the neighborhood. After Schlichtmann goes and sees that these tanneries have deep pockets connected to them, he agrees to take on the case. Soon he gets emotionally invested; which was his one rule: to never get attached to a case and sympathize over the victims. In law he can not cloud his judgment with emotions because he will make irrational decisions based on the victims and forget what is best for

The firm took the case and went to work. The first hearing ruled that Beatrice Foods wasn’t to be held accountable, just W.R. Grace Company,

A Civil Action is a true story based on a law case between the defendants, W.R Grace and Beatriz, and the plaintiffs, Schlichtmann Conway & Crowley. After a tragic accidents happen in a small town called Woburn, Massachusetts, families of their lost ones seek help at a personal injury law offices of Schlichtmann Conway & Crowley. After several weeks of unreturned calls, Ann Anderson, a parents who lost her son to Leukemia, brought it to Jan Schlichtmann, the head lawyer of the firms attention. Deciding that there was no possible case, Mr. Schlichtmann turned down the families, only to accept the case after seeing the possible income his firm could receive. “Who is going to apologize to you and pay me.” [1] Soon after, the plaintiff's, Jan Schlichtmann and his firm, file a complaint to the two companies responsible for the accidents in Woburn, W.R Grace and Beatriz.

Civil Action, a 1998 film made with Paramount Pictures, tells the story of pollution in Woburn Massachusetts, a small town, that has contaminated many children, adults, and other. This resulted in a law suit against W. R. Grace and J. Riley’s Corporations which was said that the two corporations had dumped trichloroethylene into the rivers which would infect their water supply causing disease and problems with quality as well. Statistics say in the movie that twelve kids got leukemia, and eight of those twelve died. Jan Schlichtmann the main attorney and plaintiffs at first argued about wanting to even do the case and how they’re facing a large company and this could be a very risky case. In reason, on his way back towards the city after telling Anne Anderson about how Jan couldn’t participate in such a risky case he was pulled over by the bridge were he walked and saw the river and how contaminated.

Young argued that the firm had a conflict of interest when it continued to represent other employees of Young’s employer, and when their settlement included a rule barring the firm from suing the employer in the future. Young believed that the firm had waited to pursue her case until its other case was settled. The jury determined that Becker & Poliakoff knew that the case had been dismissed, but withheld that information from Young so they could settle the other case and secure the $2.9 million fee and cost reimbursement in that case. The jury returned a verdict for Young of $394,000 in compensatory damages as a result of Becker & Poliakoff’s breach of fiduciary duty. The total compensatory damages consisted of $144,000 in past lost wages and $250,000 in damages for

The case for the plaintiffs was the contamination of water through two wells win Woburn, Massachusetts. From this, the contaminated water had killed many children. The ones who are accused of dumping were Beatrice Foods and E.R. Grace. Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer who took on this suit went through everything to try to get this case over with so he could get a huge profit from the case. But as he says to him “Our clients pay nothing, We pay everything”[1]. This is true, throughout the movie all of their money goes through this to get this case done. One of the men, Mr. Long, who helped with the contamination of the poison of the wells was severely sorry. He even goes to one of the families just to say,”I’m very sorry about your son.”[1]. The

“Several dead kids isn’t enough for this case”[1] said Jan Schlichtmann, a very successful personal injury lawyer, referring to a case that involves Anne Anderson. Anne lost her child to Leukemia as well has five other families in the movie “A Civil Action.” They strongly believed that their children died due to water contamination in the town of Woburn, Massachusetts. The only reason Mr. Schlichtmann found out about this case was because Anne Anderson heard a lawyer on the radio talking about his clients saying “My client’s pain is my pain”. [1]After Mr. Schlichtmann said no to this case, he went down to the lake and saw what was getting dumped in the lake. He then had

There were differences in the way the case and the prosecution and defendants lawyers were portrayed in the film and in the McDonald’s vs. Liebeck case. Stella Liebeck's case was portrayed as acquisitive and soon was manipulated to represent the flaws in the civil justice system. The media reconstructed her case into fragmented bits and transformed it to symbolize the lawsuit crisis (Haltom, McCann 2004). The media left out a great amount of crucial information and evidence that was critical to the decision making of the jury (Haltom, McCann 2004). In fact, mass media stressed the amount of money Liebeck was awarded by the jury, and failed to mention that Liebeck actually received less than 1/5th of what the jury mandated (Haltom, McCann 2004). They also failed to mention the severity of Liebeck’s burns and the extreme heat of the coffee as well as McDonald’s complete disregard for consumer safety (Haltom, McCann 2004). Most general knowledge surrounding the case is false and in favor of McDonald’s perspective.

The testimony of Owens stating she was aware of the risks that the plaintiff experienced and that this was not included in the warning labels of the product.

The movie, A Civil Action, is an interesting case for the families of eight kids who have been sick and died of Leukemia. The companies Beatrice Food and W.R. Grace & Company are the ones responsible for the children diagnosed with leukemia. There were three companies that were taken to court: J. Riley Leather (Tannery) a subsidiary of Beatrice Foods, W.R. Grace & Company. The companies make a yearly gross of $198 million a year, and Beatrice Foods makes $436 million a year. According to the movie, Jan wanted a settlement of $25 million to clean up the environment, $25 million to establish a research foundation, and $1.5 million per family for 30 years, making the total amount of money to $360,000,000. There has been 780,000 cases per year;

What does it mean for a plaintiff to have “standing” to sue? A “standing to sue” is where the plaintiff must construct that they as the plaintiff are entitled for the courts to decide the dispute at hand (Pagnattaro, Cahoy, Magid, Reed, & Shedd, 2016). There are two things that the plaintiff must have alleged, which is first that the litigation entail a case or controversy. Then second a personal stake in the decision. Also the plaintiff should give their legal position and not of a third party (Pagnattaro et al., 2016).

This case is by no means easy to judge or come to a conclusion. A large portion of the award was due to pain and suffering. It is a bit difficult to fully understand the high payout and how the amount was deemed appropriate. It is very difficult to assess a sum for spilled coffee. The jury really considered the time it took to recover and not to mention her treatment expenses. Interestingly enough, Mrs. Liebeck wanted to initially settle out of court for 20,000 dollars, which McDonalds refused. Refusing to settle out of court opened the doors to litigation and ultimately cost McDonalds in this case.

The defendants Glen Sebastian Burns and Atif Ahmad Rafay were accused to have committed aggravated first degree murder in Washington State. In a confession to an undercover RCMP officer in British Columbia, posing as a mob boss, it is clamed that Burns was a contract killer hired by Rafay to kill his parents so that Rafay could get insurance money for their deaths. It is claimed that Burns beat the victims with a baseball bat while Rafay watched (para.10). They threw their cloths away and took a bath to wash away the blood. The accused claim that the alleged confession was a lie to gain the confidence of who they thought was a Mob Boss (para.11). They were to be extradited to the United States, where if

Negligent companies who don’t care about the well being of individuals but themselves are harming the community in the most brutal way. Argo Motors and PG&E were the perfect examples of Tort Law and negligence because they cared more about making more profit off their companies and not the well being of people; leading to extreme measures such as hiding evidence and scheming on how to get away with it. In this analysis, I will talk about the Class Action and Erin Brockovich cases, two cases that took a toll when people were severely injured causing death by failing to act with reasonable care.

In the movie, A Civil Action revolves around a case about water contamination in Woburn, Massachusetts. A group of parents whose children developed leukemia teamed up together and found a lawyer, Joe Mulligan, to make a case against anyone responsible for the contamination of the local wells. Schlichtmann and his team argued that the Beatrice Foods and the W.R Grace Company were responsible for the poisoning of the wells. Schlichtmann’s firm also collected medical records from family records, he then landed in debt due to all his spendings in the investigation. Beatrice Food’s plaintiffs case is much more stronger for two reasons; they have evidence from seeing a person littering the water and the wells were always contaminated. The final