Jan Schlichtmann's A Civil Action

This paper is a review over A Civil Action. A Civil Action is a non-fictional retelling of the events that took place in Woburn, Massachusetts in the 1980s. The book follows Jan Schlichtmann, a lawyer who is recruited by a mother from the Woburn community whose child was diagnosed with leukemia, to handle their case. At first, Schlichtmann does not take the case but eventually decides to represent the Woburn citizens against two companies, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace, who were accused of contaminating the water supply. This review will highlight aspects of the author as well as critique the material found in the book. In this review, I will also discuss things that this book has taught me and what I found interesting about the book. Jonathan

An action-packed, drama-filled, and thrilling novel, but a novel none-the-less. It’s the case itself and the people within the situation that raises questions. Why had these companies let it get this bad? Sure, you do what is convenient and cheap for the company, that is how a company makes money, but how could a company that is ran by humans let it get as bad as it was? Did they merely not think about the repercussions or did they deliberately allow this to happen just because they did not want to find a better option that could cost them more money? The case highlighted in the book raises a lot of disturbing questions that have to do with how little concern people show when it comes to cutting corners for the sake of saving money, but Harr himself laid everything out

He lists numerous people that were involved in the case and how they helped him along with how accommodating they were to his research. In addition to case-related sources, Harr even added resources that he had come across in his study of subjects that pertained to the case. When he had trouble understanding leukemia research, the clustering aspects, or legal history, he turned to articles that helped him understand. He shared these articles with his readers so that he didn’t leave them with a lot of questions or leave them confused on what was going on. There was only one illustration in A Civil Action, and that was the map of Woburn, Massachusetts circa 1970. I found this map actually quite helpful when I was reading about the events that happened in Woburn. I found myself referring back to the map to help understand how these events tied together and how everything was laid out. This map was especially helpful for it gave me a visual to look at when trying to figure out where Wells H and G were in correlation to the Woburn citizen’s