lsj final paper

The Downside of Legal Discretion

It is extremely difficult to win a case when everyone, including the judge is against 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, the jury, and the lawyers. Although in some circumstances legal discretion is used in a sound manner, A Civil Action ultimately illustrates the problematic nature of discretion if it is exercised in a biased way because this can lead to unjust outcomes that contradict the spirit of the law.
To fully understand the role of discretion in the outcomes of cases, it is important to know what legal discretion is. The formal definition of legal discretion is that it is the exercise of judgment in the interpretation, application, and enforcement of the law. Due to the in-determinant nature of the law, discretion is inevitable. The use of discretion is important because law in the books is not necessarily the same as law in action. There is no straightforward set of guidelines on how to apply the law, so people must use their best judgment. Some jobs in society practice a greater amount of discretion than others, which was illustrated in the movie A Well Founded Fear. The movie was about the asylum process and it showed how the asylum workers must practice a great amount of discretion when deciding whether or not to grant a refugee asylum. The asylum workers in the video each developed their own rules of thumb and the outcomes might be different depending on which worker is assigned (A Well Founded Fear). Discretion becomes problematic when it is exercised in biased ways that ultimately undermine the spirit of the law, or legislative intent.
In the Woburn case illustrated by A Civil Action, the judge’s exercise of legal discretion influenced the tone of the case and undeniably had the greatest influence on determining the outcome of the case. One of the most important examples of the judge’s exercise of discretion involves the Rule 11 motion. At the beginning of the Woburn case, Cheeseman, an attorney for W.R. Grace, filed a Rule 11 motion claiming the Schlichtmann’s lawsuit was frivolous. It was up the Judge Skinner to interpret the Rule 11 motion and decide whether or not it was granted, which in the end the judge ruled that “the defendant’s Rule 11 motion is DENIED” (Harr 119). If the judge had granted the Rule 11 motion, the case would have ended before it even began so the judge’s decision completely influenced the outcome of the Woburn case by allowing it to go further. Judge Skinner’s use of discretion influences the outcome of the case even further when he decided how to run the trial, which was “a plan that was virtually identical with Facher’s” (Harr 286). Judge Skinner’s decision to side with Facher’s plan clearly influenced the outcome of the case because it placed the “waterworks phase of the case” at the end of the trial which was a disadvantage to Schlichtmann. Judge Skinner’s decision made the case more difficult for Schlichtmann to prove and to win the jury over by determining how the trial was run in Facher’s favor. By separating the trial into separate parts, the jury was missing important evidence as to when the solvents had gotten into the wells. Judge Skinner’s exercise of discretion illustrates the major influence he had on the outcome of the case even though the judge is supposed to play a neutral role. His tendency to favor Facher over Schlichtmann illustrates the judge’s bias, undermining the legislative intent of the adversarial system where judges play a more passive role.
The influence

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