Narrator: Imagine being woken by a phone call, not from a client, but from a bank telling you they’re about to repossess your Porsche. For lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, this wasn't a nightmare; it was his reality in July 1986. While a jury deliberated on a case that had consumed his life and his firm's entire fortune, the symbols of his success were being stripped away. He was, as his financial advisor told him, "living on vapor." This moment of personal and professional crisis is the entry point into the sprawling, devastating legal war at the heart of Jonathan Harr's masterpiece of investigative journalism, A Civil Action. It's a story that explores what happens when a small town, ravaged by a mysterious cluster of childhood leukemia, decides to sue two of the nation's largest corporations for allegedly poisoning their water.

Narrator: The story begins not in a courtroom, but in the quiet, working-class town of Woburn, Massachusetts. In the 1970s, a mother named Anne Anderson faced every parent's worst nightmare: her young son, Jimmy, was diagnosed with leukemia. As Jimmy battled the disease, Anne began to notice a horrifying pattern. Other children in her East Woburn neighborhood were also getting sick. She heard of more and more leukemia cases, far too many for a town of its size. Her grief slowly turned into a burning question: was something in the environment, something in their very homes, killing their children?

Her suspicion focused on the water, which often came out of the tap discolored and with a foul, chemical odor. In 1979, her fears were amplified when state officials discovered that two of the town's municipal wells, known as G and H, were heavily contaminated with industrial solvents, including a known carcinogen called trichloroethylene, or TCE. The wells were immediately shut down, but for Anne and other families, the damage was already done. Spurred to action, she and Reverend Bruce Young of Trinity Episcopal Church began a community-wide investigation, placing pins on a map for every confirmed case of childhood leukemia. The result was a terrifying cluster, concentrated in the very area served by the contaminated wells. This grassroots effort, born from a mother's intuition and a community's shared tragedy, laid the groundwork for one of the most significant environmental lawsuits in American history.

Narrator: The families' quest for answers led them to Jan Schlichtmann, a charismatic and ambitious personal injury lawyer. Schlichtmann's career was a study in contradictions. He was initially drawn to law to fight injustice, working for the ACLU to defend the rights of the disadvantaged. Yet, he also craved the wealth and status that came with winning big. A pivotal moment came early in his career with the Eaton case, representing a family whose young son had drowned in a gravel pit. Against all advice, Schlichtmann rejected a settlement offer and took the case to trial, winning a verdict five times larger. The victory solidified his reputation and his belief in his own abilities, but it also fueled a high-stakes, high-risk approach to law.

When the Woburn case landed on his desk, Schlichtmann was initially hesitant. It was a "toxic tort" case, notoriously difficult and expensive to prove. It would require millions of dollars for expert witnesses and scientific studies, with no guarantee of a return. But the case's potential for a massive verdict and the sheer moral weight of the families' stories proved irresistible. He and his small firm, Schlichtmann, Conway & Crowley, decided to take the case, effectively betting their entire financial future on the outcome. This decision set Schlichtmann on a collision course with corporate giants, a path that would test his ideals, his finances, and his very identity.

Narrator: Arrayed against Schlichtmann and the Woburn families were two corporate behemoths: W. R. Grace, a chemical conglomerate, and Beatrice Foods, a diversified food company. Each owned a facility near the contaminated wells. To defend themselves, they hired the best lawyers money could buy, creating a legal battlefield of David versus two Goliaths. While Grace's lawyer, William Cheeseman, was aggressive and confrontational, the true master of the defense was Jerome Facher, the lawyer for Beatrice Foods.

Facher was a legend in Boston legal circles and a professor at Harvard Law School. He was known for his meticulous preparation, his frugal habits, and his intimidating courtroom presence. In his trial practice course, he was famous for his demanding, Socratic method, once reducing a student to tears before calmly explaining, "This is an intellectual profession. You are not driving nails into a board." Facher's strategy was simple and brutal: to overwhelm, outspend, and demoralize the opposition. He believed that any civil case could be won, not necessarily on the merits, but through procedural mastery and psychological warfare. He saw the lawsuit not as a search for truth, but as a battle to be won by any legal means necessary.

Narrator: The legal process that followed was not a swift pursuit of justice, but a grueling war of attrition. The "discovery" phase, where each side gathers evidence, became a strategic minefield. Facher and Cheeseman’s teams subjected the families to exhaustive, often painful, depositions. They were forced to recount every detail of their children's illnesses and deaths, and were grilled about their use of hundreds of household products, from peanut butter to hairspray, in an effort to suggest alternative causes for the cancer cluster.

Meanwhile, Schlichtmann's firm was bleeding money. The costs were astronomical, with expenses for geological investigations, medical experts, and deposition transcripts running into the millions. Schlichtmann’s financial advisor, James Gordon, desperately tried to keep the firm afloat, securing a line of credit from a banker they called "Uncle Pete." The financial pressure was immense, turning Schlichtmann's office into a high-stress "War Room." The defense lawyers used this financial vulnerability as a weapon, filing motion after motion to drive up costs and wear Schlichtmann down, hoping to force him into a cheap settlement or bankruptcy.

Narrator: After years of preparation and a 78-day trial, the fate of the case rested with the jury. Judge Skinner had controversially split the trial into phases, deciding that the jury must first rule on the "waterworks" issue—whether Grace and Beatrice had contaminated the wells—before they could even hear about the children's leukemia. After five agonizing days of deliberation, the jury returned with a complicated and ultimately devastating verdict. They found W. R. Grace liable for contaminating the water, but only after 1964, a finding that made proving the link to the earliest cancer cases nearly impossible. Worse, they found Beatrice Foods not liable at all.

The verdict was a crushing blow. Schlichtmann had lost his case against Beatrice and was left with a severely weakened case against Grace. Facing financial ruin and emotional exhaustion, he was forced into a corner. Al Eustis, Grace's representative, offered an $8 million settlement. Schlichtmann's partners, seeing the writing on the wall, urged him to take it. In a tense phone call, with his colleagues shouting, "Close it, Jan. Close it," Schlichtmann accepted. The settlement provided some compensation for the families, but it was a fraction of what they had hoped for and felt like a hollow victory. For Schlichtmann and his firm, it was the end of the road. After paying off debts and experts, they were left with nothing.

Narrator: A Civil Action is a profound and unsettling look at the American legal system. It reveals that the pursuit of justice is often not a noble quest for truth, but a brutal, expensive, and protracted war where victory can be as devastating as defeat. The single most important takeaway is the immense disparity of power between ordinary citizens and large corporations, and how the structure of the legal system itself can favor the party with the deepest pockets and the greatest capacity to endure.

The book leaves us with a challenging question: What is the true price of justice? For the families of Woburn, it was the loss of their children and years of emotional anguish. For Jan Schlichtmann, it was his fortune, his firm, and his pride. The story serves as a powerful reminder that while a lawsuit may end, the consequences—for the people, the environment, and our faith in the system—can linger for a lifetime.