in the movie A Civil Action, John Travolta portrays an attorney
named Jan Schlichtmann who files suit against corporate
giants W. R. Grace (a chemical company) and Beatrice Foods (a
food conglomerate which owned the local J. J. Riley tannery) for
allegedly dumping and illegally disposing of harmful chemicals,
particularly the carcinogen trichloroethylene (known as TCE), in
the grounds surrounding the town of Woburn, Massachusetts.1 The
suit contends that the chemicals made their way into two of the
town’s wells (Wells G and H), thus contaminating the water. Residents
complained that the water smelled bad, had a rust color, corroded
their pipes, and, ultimately and tragically, caused some eight
cases of leukemia in the children of Woburn. W. R. Grace and
Beatrice denied these charges and vigorously defended themselves.
One of the leukemia victims was a boy by the name of Jimmy
Anderson, who contracted leukemia in January 1972 and finally
succumbed nine years later. During the years of Jimmy’s continual
hospital visits and medical procedures and the cycles of remission
and return, his mother, Anne, met seven other Woburn families
who each had a child stricken with leukemia. Convinced by the
number of cases and by the clustering of them in an area of the
town that received its water from Wells G and H that the bad- smelling
water was to blame, she made contact with Schlichtmann and
organized a meeting in the winter of 1982 for him and these families
for the purpose of bringing a civil suit against the two corporations.