Word: schlichtmann
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...SCHLICHTMANN WAS THE SORT OF lawyer who inspires anti-lawyer jokes. He was arrogant, humorless and sleekly vulpine in his $1,000 suits, $65 ties and Porsche 928. Jonathan Harr was a baby-faced magazine writer in old jeans, beat-up boots and a rumpled sports jacket who did his best work when blending with the furniture...
...unlikely matchup. But with Schlichtmann's cooperation, Harr has turned a sprawling, complex liability case into a suspenseful narrative full of intellectual surprises and bold-faced characters. Based on Harr's fly-on-the-wall reporting, A Civil Action (Random House; 500 pages; $25) chronicles a lawsuit brought in 1986 by eight families in Woburn, Massachusetts, against Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace. The plaintiffs charged that toxic waste on properties owned by the giant corporations had infiltrated town drinking water and caused an outbreak of leukemia...
Lawyers for eight Woburn families are charging that factories owned by Grace and Beatrice contaminated the wells by knowingly dumping wastes into soil that leached into an underground aquifer. The two companies, said Attorney Jan Schlichtmann, "knew what they were doing could hurt people but . . . chose to do it anyway." The wells, closed in 1979, were found to contain five toxic chemicals, among them trichloroethylene, or a cleaning solvent that Schlichtmann contends causes cancer, a point vigorously denied by the defense...
...Oakland, Calif., Mrs. Emil Schlichtmann, noting her young daughters' fear of a snake in their yard, told them: "Little beasties like this are harmless, and you must not be afraid." She patted the snake's head, was promptly bitten. The snake was a young rattler...