Feb 20, 2020 · Before he can say goodbye, Reverend Young asks Schlichtmann if money could help, telling him he just spoke to a group in Washington, D. C., called Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. In fact,...
Jan Schlichtmann : [narrating] The odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Think about that for a second. Think about that for a second. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian roulette are better than winning a case at trial. 12 times better.
A Civil Action is a 1998 American legal drama film written and directed by Steven Zaillian, based on the 1995 book of the same name by Jonathan Harr.Starring John Travolta, Robert Duvall, James Gandolfini, Dan Hedaya, John Lithgow, William H. Macy, Kathleen Quinlan, and Tony Shalhoub, it tells the true story of a court case about environmental pollution that took place in …
May 23, 2017 · Brad Cosgrove’s favorite lawyer is American lawyer Jan Schlichtmann. The movie A Civil Action portrays the true story of Jan (played by John Travolta) going against two large companies related with the environmental pollution that occurred in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1980’s. This is Brad’s favorite quote from the film: “Lawsuits are war, it’s as simple as that …
The whistleblowers in the film were Mr. Love who, when he saw his children drinking the water decided to tell the truth, and the friend of Mr. Love who was all for sharing.
431 (denial of defendants' motion to dismiss). A 1998 film of the same name, starring John Travolta as plaintiff's lawyer Jan Schlichtmann and Robert Duvall as Beatrice Foods attorney Jerome Facher, was based on the book.
Pressures take their toll, with Jan and his partners going deeply into debt. After a lengthy trial, the case is dismissed in favor of Beatrice, after Jan turned down an offer of $20 million from Beatrice attorney Jerry Facher during jury deliberations.
Based on Jonathan Harr's painstakingly researched book about the Woburn case, "A Civil Action" introduces us to Schlichtmann (John Travolta) as a slick Boston attorney who is very good at one thing and one thing only: forcing companies with deep pockets to settle for big bucks by dangling a plaintiff in a wheelchair – ...
The case is certainly a potential tear-jerker. Based on Jonathan Harr's best-selling book, the movie tells the true story of eight families who saw their children die of leukemia in Woburn, Mass., possibly because of contaminated water from a nearby factory.Jan 11, 1999
He practices environmental law.
(His wife still refuses to go to the annual Woburn gatherings for this reason.) Schlichtmann fell behind on his mortgage and started living in the office. But none of the partners regretted the case.Sep 22, 2009
The jury deliberated for nine days and found W.R. Grace liable and Beatrice Foods not liable of contaminating wells G and H.Nov 14, 2016
Civil cases generally only result in monetary damages or orders to do or not do something, known as injunctions. Note that a criminal case may involve both jail time and monetary punishments in the form of fines.Apr 16, 2020
environmental lawyersBoston Class Action Lawyer Jan Schlichtmann is one of America's foremost environmental lawyers, specializing in toxic torts and consumer protection. He graduated from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1973 before attaining his JD at Cornell University in 1977.Sep 30, 2021
When the case was over, Schlichtmann lost his partners, his career and "got the hell out of town" by moving to Hawaii. He returned to Boston in 1993 to start over, which has meant marriage and two young sons. Since the movie, he is especially in demand on the lecture circuit.Feb 22, 1999
Jan Schlichtmann is a nationally known environmental and civil justice lawyer whose work has inspired a book and movie. Schlichtmann, named one of “The Best Lawyers in America” via peer review process, is coming to The University of Tulsa as part of the Richard B. Risk Continuing Legal Education Practicum Series.Mar 28, 2018
After a lengthy trial, the case is dismissed in favor of Beatrice, after Jan turned down an offer of $20 million from Beatrice attorney Jerry Facher during jury deliberations.
Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 and wrote: "Civil Action is like John Grisham for grownups.".
A lawsuit was filed over industrial operations that appeared to have caused fatal cases of leukemia and cancer, as well as a wide variety of other health problems, among the citizens of the city. The case involved is Anne Anderson, et al., v. Cryovac, Inc., et al..
A postscript reveals that the EPA, building on Jan's work on the case, later brought its own enforcement action against Beatrice and Grace, forcing them to pay millions to clean up the land and the groundwater. It takes Jan several years to settle his debts, and he now practices environmental law in New Jersey .
As author Jonathan Harr eventually chronicled so well in A Civil Action, Schlichtmann was a brash young lawyer after Cornell Law, brash enough to have turned down a $75,000 settlement offer in his first trial—a wrongful-death case, one that even the judge thought should be settled.
After Woburn, Schlichtmann blamed his problems with the case on Judge Skinner. After Skinner’s final decision, according to A Civil Action, he yelled in the courthouse, “The man is a fucking monster!”. Schlichtmann shook with rage, and would not stop shaking for five years.
Back then, Schlichtmann’s motto for the firm was “Rich, famous, and doing good.”. The Woburn case would make them rich and famous, and it would do a great deal of good: create a landmark precedent, but also change corporate behavior and, by extension, the culture of America.
It was a bold claim, made all the bolder because environmental law was in its infancy then, the link between chemicals and the cancers they caused legally irrelevant if not nonexistent. When Schlichtmann’s firm took up Woburn in 1982, for example, none of the Big Tobacco lawsuits had been settled yet.
In one case, he sued Massachusetts General Hospital, arguing that an infection had eaten away the hip bone of a man named Paul Carney, who’d come to MGH after a car accident. The biggest plaintiffs firm in New York had already turned down the case, as had two Boston firms.
But Schlichtmann doesn’t crack a smile at this. He just stares the reporters down. Woburn, it seems, changed Schlichtmann in many ways—except the most important one.
No, worse, because Schlichtmann does not bring his cases to trial.