Jonathan Harr — A Civil Action
25 published claims from this book.
- A hidden tannery report confirmed groundwater flowed toward the city wells
- A judge’s self-interest in avoiding admitted error shapes legal rulings
- A once-wealthy star litigator ended the case financially destitute and bankrupt
- Anne Anderson says the trial nearly destroyed her and nearly destroyed Jan Schlichtmann too
- Conway believes only money, not perception, actually drives Eustis’s decisions
- Corporate defendants fear settlements will invite copycat lawsuits, not just cost money
- Credible settlement leverage requires genuine willingness to proceed to trial
- Firm survival can override personal loyalty and family priorities for its partners
- Groundwater contamination like TCE can persist for thousands of years
- Judge Skinner’s compound jury questions and post-trial rulings foreclosed Beatrice’s appeal
- Large jury verdicts are routinely reduced or overturned on appeal
- Legal experts conclude courts do not reliably punish evident cheating
- Litigation costs drove the lawyers to genuine personal financial ruin
- Negotiators insist settlement floors must reflect honest case valuation, not panic
- Schlichtmann attributes his nine-year obsessive pursuit to mixed motives
- Schlichtmann frames settlement as a positive PR event to persuade Grace
- Schlichtmann says the experience bankrupted him but forced self-reflection and enriched his life
- Schlichtmann sees his legal crusade as a catastrophic self-made ruin
- Settlement terms can be engineered to publicly obscure a defendant’s guilt
- The 1986 trial left the flamboyant young lawyer broke and ‘broken in spirit’
- The firm’s partners were reduced to scavenging childhood savings for cash
- The narrative’s factual reconstruction rests on a vast documentary and testimonial record
- The Woburn case lasted 9 years and drove Schlichtmann into personal bankruptcy
- Toxic contamination is so widespread that relocation offers no real escape
- Years of intensive treatment removed only tiny amounts of groundwater contaminant