A Civil Action: Jan Schlichtmann

Words: 337
Pages: 2
Open Document
In the movie A Civil Action, Anne Anderson contacts lawyer Jan Schlichtmann when she and others in her community lose their children to leukemia. The families argue that the city wells must be contaminated with trichloroethylene and this is what caused their leukemia [1]. Jan, arogant and unsympathetic to the families’ losses, refuses to take the case because he believes it to be a money-pit. However, when he is informed that the involved companies, Beatrice and Grace, are extremely profitable annually, he accepts the case. Mr. Facher, representing Beatrice, and Mr. Cheeseman, representing Grace, are co-defendants working to ensure that Jan has no case in court. First, Jan begins with depositions to coerce those involved in the accused companies
Show More

Related Documents: A Civil Action: Jan Schlichtmann

lsj final paper

you, which is exactly how Jan Schlichtmann felt in the Woburn case against W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods. The Woburn case involved a civil lawsuit claiming that two huge corporations had contaminated the groundwater which led to an unnatural number of child leukemia in the town of Woburn. The act of choosing how to enforce and interpret the law plays an important role in the outcomes of the cases against Grace in Beatrice in A Civil Action. Discretion in A Civil Action is illustrated by the judge…

Words 1853 - Pages 8

Jan Shlichtmann Analysis

Jan Schlichtmann works as a Boston attorney in the movie A Civil Action. While in a radio interview, he receives a random call from a woman unknown to him named Anne Anderson. She is said to have his number, and she asks, “How come you never call me?” [1]. This is the first encounter Jan has with this woman that has a case open under his firm. Her son died of leukemia two years ago, and ever since then there were “12 deaths over 15 years from leukaemia - eight of them children” in her neighborhood…

Words 169 - Pages 1