Worth a mass
Jake Michie
A CIVIL ACTION by Jonathan Harr Century, £15.99, pp. 502 Adead child is generally worth less than a million dollars', writes the Jonathan Harr, reflecting on jury award averages in Massachusetts. 'Only a million dollars!', you cry, 'for a human life! Criminal!' On second thoughts', you may reason, 'there's a lot you can do with that kind of cash. . . ' At this point one draws up short, feeling clammy and ashamed; but it is not the secondary question of size that's distasteful and inappropriate, it's the concept of `worth'. How can a life be assigned a mate- rial value at all? Clearly it cannot. Unless, of course, you are involved in a case of civil litigation such as is described in this asphyxiatingly exciting book.
Prima facie, the details of the case appear straightforward enough. Jan Schlichtmann, a hot-shot Boston lawyer fresh from a lucrative and prestigious medical malpractice suit, is approached by a group of families who believe themselves to have been poisoned by contaminants in their local water supply. Their claim cer- tainly seems persuasive. Not only had they suffered 'minor' complaints ranging from burning rashes to abdominal cramps, eight of the families had lost children to leukaemia. As Schlichtmann's preliminary investigations reveal, such a high incidence, in such a small area, spanning only 15 years, certainly constituted what the experts refer to dryly as 'a cluster'. Leukaemia clusters are extremely rare. There was definitely something going on.
So far, so good (for Schlichtmann, at least); all he required was someone to file the suit against. Once again, preliminary investigation yielded promising results. If the wells that supplied the water were con- taminated, there were only two conceivable sources: a nearby tannery and a small man- ufacturing plant, each owned by one of the biggest companies in America. Companies `with deep pockets', as lawyers have it. Schlichtmann took the case.
What transpired thereafter is purest Hollywood (which may explain why Robert Redford has bought the movie rights for an unprecedented $12 million). Schlichtmann, the fast-talking, Porsche-driving, silk-suit- wearing wonderboy must take on the ponderous, austere might of Boston's old- est and finest law firms and in doing so risk everything. For nine years the case con- sumes him but sadly it's only 500 pages for us. Sad because moving among the splen did gallery of characters, the dissembling factory owners, the bullied witnesses, the wrangling `-ists' (toxicologists, immunolo- gists, neurologists) and observing the baroque manoeuvrings of the lawyers as they attempt to undermine and discredit the opposition, is riveting.
At the heart of it all is Schlichtmann himself, a man who's myopia, egotism and paranoia are matched only by his intelli- gence, energy, and a commitment that takes his firm to the edge of bankruptcy and himself well over (he ends up camping in the office, his house having been repossessed). Schlichtmann must gain victory at any cost. But for whom? Time and time again Schlichtmann is offered handsome out-of-court settlements (i.e. more than a million a dead child) which he routinely rebuffs. He wants the big green or nothing. Unfortunately his motivation is not so clear. Is he looking after the interests of his clients? Or does he wish to punish these evil corporations before a public for whom the size of pay- out has become the only barometer of guilt? Or is it just plain lust for fortune and celebrity? 'The truth', as one of the lawyers remarks about the case itself, 'is at the bot- tom of a bottomless pit'. It is an ambiguity that pervades every page of this fine book and for all the high drama as the verdict approaches there is the persistent worry that, in America at least, the law is less about justice than it is about lawyers.
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