Document LgmbEm9yNBa9ybLQxJ0qLpXGq

FILE NAME: WR Grace (WRG) DATE: 1995 DOC#: WRG138 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: 1995 Book excerpt - A Civil Action A Civil Action r / ^ .r r t 19 f C "Did they give you a raise?" She nodded and then she asked him about the case. He gave a per- tetorv answer. Her new boyfriend was awaiting her at the door. "Ian, ase take care of yourself," Teresa said. She put her hand on hh )ulder and left it there for a few seconds, long enough to transform : gesture from casual to intimate. Schlichtmann's eyes followed her as she walked away, slim and gracc- , and he was struck by how lovely she was. He thought about the ae that had passed, how much his life had changed, how much he d lost. But the reverie did not last long. In a moment, he started nking about the case. Facher is at the end o f his career, and so am !. aught Schlichtmann at the end of the evening. 7 igulis from Boston Harbor wheeled about overhead, in the dull, den November sky. It was cold enough to snow, but Schlichtmann d taken off his coat and was working in his shirtsleeves. He and owley were at Safe 'N Sound Storage on Morrissey Boulevard, where z firm rented two cinder-block rooms. The rooms were dank and heated, filled with Woburn documents. Rather than pay another anth's rent, Schlichtmann had decided to clean the rooms out. Four hundred cartons o f documents, the entire archive o f the oburn case, were piled up to the corrugated metal ceilings. Schlichtmn planned to save only the families' medical records, which he >uld give to them that evening. Everything else he'd throw out. ireading his way among the stacks of cartons, he couldn't resist open; a few. He found transcripts of the trial and hearings, o f the deposins of the families and the expert witnesses and the Grace and atrice employees, medical studies o f the families, reports from the 'A and the U.S. Geological Survey. H e picked up a large trial exhibit picting the Aberjona Valley. It was from one of the Beatrice experts, his guy was a charlatan," he said with harsh laugh. "W hat a joke." : crushed it under his foot. Crowley had commandeered a garbage truck, which had backed up the door of the storage rooms. Moving the heavy cartons was hard ysical labor, and both men soon worked up a sw^eat. Schlichtmann BUmimmm A # 49! heaved cartons into the dark, stinking maw of the garbage truck like a man shoveling coal into a furnace. Breathing hard, he paused for a moment and watched the hydraulic machinery crush open the cartons, spilling out thousands of pages. "All this paper," said Schlichtmann, more to himself than to Crow ley. "It represents nine years of my life. W hy did I do it?" H e paused for a moment and then answered his own question. "Pride, greed, ambi tion. G etting rich by doing good." Crowley gave a short laugh, more like a grunt. "I'm thirty-nine years old," continued Schlichtmann, "and I 've dug one fucking big hole. A man couldn't dig a bigger hole." Schlichtmann filed for bankruptcy. H e had hoped to pay off his debts, but in the end he could not. He found himself unable to work on cases anymore. He decided to quit the practice of law and go to Hawaii. In the Chapter 7 papers filed in bankruptcy court in Boston, he listed his assets as fourteen dollars in a checking account, a fiffy-dollar cassette radio, one hundred dollars in cash, and five hundred dollars' w orth of clothes. (The expensive suits, after all, were no longer new.) He owed his creditors $1,231,542, of which state and federal taxes accounted for almost two thirds. In W oburn the EPA announced a plan for cleaning up the Abcrjona aquifer. The agency had filed suit against both W. R. Grace and Bea trice Foods to recover the costs of the cleanup project. Grace had agreed to pay its share, but new lawyers for Beatrice challenged the EPA's lawsuit, citing the verdict and Judge Skinner's findings in the W oburn civil action. The EPA brushed this aside. Its studies all proved that Beatrice's land was responsible for contaminating the aquifer. In the end, Beatrice also consented to pay its share o f the cleanup costs. In a public presentation to the citizens o f Woburn, the EPA unveiled a reclamation plan that would take fifty years to complete and would cost an estimated $69.4 million, the largest and most costly environ mental cleanup in New England. The Boston Herald called Schlichtmann for a comment. "It's about time," Schlichtmann was quoted as saying. W. R. Grace was indicted by the U.S. Attorney for lying in its state ments to the EPA, lies that Schlichtmann had brought to the Justice 492 A Civil Action Department's attention because of Al Love's willingness to come for ward. Grace pleaded guilty to two felony counts and was assessed the maximum fine, which at the time amounted to ten thousand dollars. Shortly after, W. R. Grace announced that it would close its Woburn plant, where ninety-five workers were employed. Most workers were offered jobs elsewhere. "It's also possible that there will be some lay offs,'' said a Grace spokesman. Kiley lent Schlichtmann the price of a round-trip plane ticket to Hawaii, and also gave him a little spending money. For a week or so Schlichtmann stayed in a grimy, dilapidated motel, twenty-seven dollars a night with the bathroom down the hail. Then he bought a backpack and a sleeping bag and set off hiking on the western island o f Kauai. He walked over a mountain pass to a remote valley named Kalalau. He spent several days camping on the white sand beach, completely alone. He cooked over campfires. He swam and lay in the sun. He told himself that he was purging his mind, but in truth he kept wondering liow one would know if one had wasted one's life. He was afraid of finding the answer. He wasn't sure from one moment to the next just what he intended to do. O n his third day at the beach, right around dusk, he stripped off all his clothes and swam out into the open ocean. The sea wus as smooth as glass, with only the gentlest o f swells. He swam westward, toward the setting sun, for a long time, and when he finally turned to look back the island of Kauai was little more than a blur on the horizon. The water was warm and he was naked, and he felt completely at peace. He treaded water for a while, gazing back at the island. He thought of swimming on until he could no longer see land. But then this thought turned on itself, and he began swimming siowly back.  i t H 'J'i'jV oJe/a n / Paw tcefr I began working on this project in February 1986, before the start of trial, the suggestion of a friend, Tracy Kidder, who knew I was looking for a bo topic. Aker some initial research that consisted largely of reading news z counts, I met with Jan Schlichtmann and his partners in their office on Mi Street. Schlichtmann agreed to let me follow the events of a major lawsuit an observer from within, with complete access to his preparation of witness and the daily strategy sessions with his partners. The Woburn families ai graciously gave their consent to my presence and allowed me to sir in on the meetings with Schlichtmann. During the five months of trial, I was exclude only from one early meeting, in April 1986, concerning the firm's dire llnsi dal strairs. Thereafter, during the summer of the harrowing settlement neg< nation and the ensuing four years of the Beatrice appeal, I was permittc unrestricted access to the firms operation. Schlichtmann and his partners imposed no conditions or limitations upo me. In was understood from the outset that they would not have the right t read and revise the manuscript before publication. I, however, imposed on condition upon myself: I decided that during the trial and the settlement nr goriarion 1 would not attempt to seek.equivalent access to the lawyers fo Grace and Beatrice. I did not want to put myself in the position of witting! or unwittingly becoming a conduit of information for one side or the other. Throughout the course of the lengthy trial Lwould occasionally speak will Jerome Facher and, to a lesser extent, William Cheesepan, bur 1 did no begin the process of in-depth interviewing until after t re .settlement. WitS Facners invitation, I attended his trial practice class at Harvard Law be;too during the spring semester of 1981'. ana again p 1988 although wd'b d . WT regularity. After class he r d [ would otreii cat dinner It the i l.w . wd