ipl-logo

A Civil Action: Anderson Vs. Cryovac Case

1404 Words6 Pages

In the movie, A Civil Action, the story follows a case from back in the day called Anderson vs. Cryovac. The case was conducted in a federal courthouse, John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, which is located in Boston Massachusetts. The case lasted about 2 months, September 3rd to November 5th, in 1986. The lawsuit was underlining the toxic contamination of groundwater in Woburn, Massachusetts. The prosecutors were Anne Anderson and various other families from Woburn, Massachusetts. The defendants associated with this case, included Beatrice Foods, Cryovac and UniFirst. The prosecution team sued the defendants for the causing contaminated water and a cancer cluster in their town. The main source of contamination was the tannery owned …show more content…

The four major acts and laws made were the Clean Water Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act(CERCLA), The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), and Hazardous Ranking System(HRS). The Clean Water Act is to renovate and maintain the nation's water by averting point and nonpoint pollution sources. In integration, this act does not address groundwater contamination directly because that is something addressed in a different act. This act establishes the rudimentary standards for surface water. This act was made in 1948 but changed drastically in the 1970s. Next, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, also known as CERCLA is fundamentally a tax. CERCLA taxes chemical and petroleum industries. In five years over one billion dollars were accumulated in taxes. Most of that money went towards a trust fund that benefited clean hazardous wastes. This trust fund provides for cleanup, if no party is responsible for the wastes that go into the groundwater. Next, the superfund amendments and reauthorization act fundamentally amended the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act. It also revised the hazardous ranking system. For starters, it inclined the trust from 1.6 billion dollars to 8.5 billion dollars. SARA got the public more involved in the decisions on how to purify waste sites. This act made CERCLA rethink their standards and visually think about and realize whether or not they were still good standards. Also it enlarged the focus of human health. Lastly, hazardous ranking system which is better known as HRS optically analyzes hazardous waste lands decides if it should go on the national priority list(NPL). This system goes and ranks how deplorable a waste land is and puts them on a list to be cleaned immediately. The higher on the list a waste

Show More
Related

Anne Anderson Argumentative Essay

502 Words | 3 Pages

Jan acknowledges his situation, “The whole idea of lawsuits is to settle, to compel the other side to settle” [1]. In fact, he uses this reasoning to his advantage by demanding a total of 320 million dollars from both companies. The case is drawn out and both businesses stubbornly refuse to take responsibility, Cheeseman arguing that, “These chemicals never reached Wells G and H - we will show that. And they never made anyone sick. We will show that, too” [1] while Fascher, representing Beatrice Foods, explaining that, “Unless you've proven that poisons reached the wells, there's no case” [1].

Read More

Richard M. Nixon's National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa)

1940 Words | 8 Pages

On December 31, 1970, President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act; this bill controls our air pollution. President Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, or the Ocean Dumping Act, on October 21, 1972. This Act regulates the dumping of anything harmful towards marine animals. President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act of 1973 on December 28, 1073; this strengthens the Act and protects many species. Lastly, Nixon proposed the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, which protects the nation’s lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands, and other bodies of water.

Read More

Judicial System In A Civil Action By Jonathan Harr

201 Words | 1 Pages

The book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr explains the predicament of a lawyer who rejected a case that was very risky and complicated as a personal injury lawyer. Through various legal concepts and terminologies discussed in class, the story details how the judicial system operates. Particularly, the case involves victims of childhood leukemia in the small town of Woburn, Massachusetts, where the city wells have been found to be contaminated with tetrachloroethylene (TCE) — a suspected carcinogen and other industrial byproducts. (Glantz, 1998). Two of the largest corporations, companies names, each with a plant near the wells were accused of being responsible.

Read More

Mobile Energy Services Company: Ownership And Contractual Structures

3473 Words | 14 Pages

This kind of risk is often called environmental and social risk in project finance. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations on the air pollution and wastewater that produced by paper and pulp manufacturers. The three mills would shut down if they were not forced to comply with the new regulations. Jaakko Pöyry estimated that the pulp mill would need from $150 million to $200 million to update its devices. However, the expenses incurred to adapt to the new regulation for the paper and tissue mill were unknown.

Read More

Idle No More Movement Analysis

636 Words | 3 Pages

The consequences now is that Canada has 97 lakes, three oceans, and 62 rivers protected in comparison to the 32,000 lakes, and 2.25 million rivers before the bill was passed (Graveline, 2012: 295). This means that Canadian waters are not environmentally protected are therefore easily accessible to companies and the industry as a whole. With the history of oil spills, which is the industry that Bill C-45 is benefiting, the people nearest those population will feel the impacts of this bill the most. The most recent oil spill happened on April, 2011 documented to be the largest land spill in Alberta known as the Little Buffalo oil spill which affected Lubicon Cree community the most (Graveline, 2012:

Read More

Sierra Club: Changing The Direction Of The World

645 Words | 3 Pages

The Grand Canyon Protection Act protects the cultural heritage of the Grand Canyon The Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021 helps safeguard public health from waterborne and sewage-related infectious bacteria, viruses, parasites, and toxic chemicals The GREEN Act provides tax incentives for investment in renewable energy resources and energy efficiency

Read More

EPA Mission Statement

1009 Words | 5 Pages

The Clean Water Act was first introduced in 1948 as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but in 1972 it was restructured and expanded. Since they began, the EPA has created wastewater standards for companies that create contaminants. In order to help regulate these discharges of pollutants, the EPA 's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System created a permit

Read More

Leonard Vs Pepsico Case Summary

198 Words | 1 Pages

It was a pleasure reading your response to the Leonard v PepsiCo case. I agree with you on your discussion. According to Melvin Sean, “In order for an offer to have legal effect, the offeror must have an objective intent to contract when making the offer. Generally, the offerer must have a serious intention to become bound by the offer and the terms of the offer must be reasonably certain. (The Legal Environment of Business: A Managerial Approach: Theory to Practice, p 131)

Read More

Negligence In A Civil Action By Jan Schlichtmann

719 Words | 3 Pages

This movie portrays attorneys and litigation process in a negative light. Although Jan Schlichtmann initially rejects the case, he reconsiders his decision after realizing that he is dealing with defendants with “fat wallets”. Anne Anderson and her neighbors only wanted an apology from the corporations and were not interested to obtain financial gains. Having said this, many attorneys rejected the case as they were not seeing any financial settlement. In the movie, Jan states, “a lawyer who shares his client’s pain does his client such a grave disservice, he should have his license to practice law taken away.”

Read More

Pros And Cons Of Abolishing The EPA

1307 Words | 6 Pages

STUDENTS NAME: PROFESSOR: COURSE TITLE: DATE: EPA SHOULD NOT BE DISCOUNTINUED The United States Environmental Agency (EPA) is the agency in the federal government of the United States which deals with the protection of the human health and the environment. It writes and enforces laws based on the laws that are approved and passed in the congress. In Feb this year, abill to abolish the agency was introduced in the congress but due to the following reasons the EPA should not be abolished and discontinued; The agency is charged with the mandate of converting the broad laws passed by the congress into regulations and programs that are easily understood by the public.

Read More

The Pros And Cons Of The Environmental Protection Agency

987 Words | 4 Pages

First, this bill should be opposed because of the ways that the EPA protects air. The EPA has supported and authorized many bills that help preserve the cleanliness of our air. The Environmental Protection Agency website says that their Clean Air Act “authorizes EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants”. Since 1970, this law has allowed the EPA to make sure our air is clean to breathe and advocate for the prevention of air pollution that could be harmful to humans and the environment. However, if the EPA is eradicated, there will be nobody to enforce this Clean Air Act, and therefore no regulation of air pollution, which will be disastrous for not only the environment, but the entire world, which is connected by air currents (so basically everyone on earth breathes the same air).

Read More

Cold War Environmental Awareness

1017 Words | 5 Pages

It required the Environmental Protection Agency to develop and enforce regulations to protect the public potent air quality which could be hazardous to human health. The Clean Water act established a basic structure for regulating pollution which is discharged into the waters of states in the United States. This act also Gave EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs. As a result of the “Silent Spring,” federal legislations were passed as a call to action to change the habits of humans before we destroy the thing that gives us all

Read More

Air Pollution California Essay

1511 Words | 7 Pages

This landmark symposium made the introduction of the federal government involvement in environmental regulation. In 1955 congress passed its first environmental legislation which was upheld and supported strongly by the public and improved science. After this huge merge the United States environmental protection Agency and the effective public policy toward the environmental were instituted. (Usepa,

Read More

Clean Air Act Argumentative Essay

735 Words | 3 Pages

As came several new amendments and more delegation of power to more agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. It then the EPA put in place the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). These standards were built upon the previous foundation laid by the MVAPCA. It was a way to control the number of substance that threatens air quality.

Read More

Characteristics Of Internalizing Externalities

1374 Words | 6 Pages

In response to the rapidly deteriorating environmental situation (as a result of industry development and extended manufacturing), some governments introduced special

Read More

More about A Civil Action: Anderson Vs. Cryovac Case

Related Topics

Open Document