A High-Stakes Battle, Thrice Visited

By Walter Goodman
December 30, 1998
Televison Review

If you haven't already read the best seller and haven't yet caught the new hit movie, you can get up to speed on "A Civil Action" with tonights hourlong television version of the dramatic case that set off the media blitz.

Beginning with the suspicions of a few parents in the small town of Woburn, Mass., not far from Boston that the leukemia from which their children suffered and died was caused by tainted water, this edition of "American Justice" turns to the fight by a team of lawyers to win what they hoped would be a billion-dollar judgement against two Fortune 500 companies, W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods. One mother says, "The only thing industry understands is money."

The focus here is on Jan Schlictmann (appearing tonight on the small screen and played in the movie by John Travolta), described as a flamboyant "high-stakes player" who took on the suit in the early 1980's and pursued it for almost a decade with the prospect of bringing justice to the families and making a killing for his firm, which would take a third of any settlement. "This was war, not litigation," announces Mr. Schlictmann of the bitter courtroom struggle that finally drove him into penury.

As A&E's ubiquitious narrator, Bill Kurtis, explains matters, the plaintiffs had to prove two elements: that the water was contaminated by the companies and that the contamination caused the leukemia.

The critical early decision by the judge, Walter Skinner, to postpone the parents' moving testimony until those questions of fact were resolved lest the jury's judgement be overwhemed by sympathy deprived the plaintiffs of their most potent weapon. It becomes evident from the program that no love was lost between Judge Skinner and Mr Schlictmann, whose attacks an opposing lawyer calls "scurrilous." In an interview, the judge admits to a certain impatience with what some saw as the lawyer's flirtation with paranoia.

Despite the occasional slip into cliche ("tragedy struck again"), this is a well-reported hour that brings together inestimable personal loss, big-money legal ramblings and courtroom antipathies. An epilogue tells of belated orders for cleanups of the polluted areas. For what comfort that can offer the stricken parents and bankrupt lawyers, Mr. Kurtis says, "By losing the battle, the plaintiffs may have won the war."

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