Free A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr

bled from the nose and mouth, had ringing in his ears and blurred vision. He complained especially about the pain in his stomach. When pain medication was not immediately forthcoming, he demanded it. “Don’t you understand?” he shouted at a nurse. “I really need it.”
    The following day he became despondent. The nurses tried to coax him out of bed, but all he said was “I’ll never be able to go home.” Anne rarely left the hospital. On occasion she went to the cafeteria to eat, but most of her time was spent on the children’s cancer ward. Charles Anderson returned from Toronto to be with his son and to keep Anne company. By mid-January, the boy had reached a nadir. “Saga of intermittent fever goes on,” noted one of the nurses. “Mother has been here constantly and they both appear exhausted. Jim asking: Why me?”
    Jimmy died on Sunday morning, January 18, 1981. Five days later, the Centers for Disease Control and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health jointly released a report entitled Woburn: Cancer Incidence and Environmental Hazards . The report was based on the investigationthat had started with Dr. Truman’s phone call to Clark Heath at the CDC more than a year earlier.
    The report confirmed that an unusual number of leukemia cases did indeed exist in east Woburn. It read, in part: “Analysis of residence at the time of diagnosis reveals a significant concentration of cases in the eastern part of Woburn, where the incidence of disease was at least seven times greater than expected. The incidence of childhood leukemia for the rest of Woburn was not significantly elevated compared to national rates.”
    The authors of the report said they could not establish a definite link between the contaminated drinking water and childhood leukemia. But they saw reason for suspicion: “Although the contaminants in wells G and H are not known to cause leukemia, the fact that organic contaminants were found in the water supply must be emphasized.” The report pointed out that the wells had been “on line during the presumed critical exposure period of the childhood leukemia cases and they served primarily the eastern part of Woburn.”
    The authors noted that the source of the contamination of the wells was still unknown. The Environmental Protection Agency was attempting to trace the contaminants back to the point of origin, but that task, time-consuming and costly, would take at least another year, and probably longer.

The Lawyer

1
    It was the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend and the mood at Jason’s, a fashionable bar in Boston’s Back Bay, was festive. Teresa Padro, a young woman who worked as a clothing buyer for a chain of national discount stores, sat at the bar waiting for a friend to arrive. Teresa’s job required that she travel a lot. She stayed in motels, worked late, and often had to fend off the advances of middle-aged male clients after business dinners. She was thirty-one years old. She had thick, dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders, almond-colored skin, and a body slim from regular exercise.
    Two men at the bar were trying to strike up a conversation with her. On the road, this would have been an annoyance. At home, in Boston, she felt mildly flirtatious. One of the men was making his pitch when she happened to glance at the door and met the eyes of a man who had just walked in. He was tall and lanky, and he wore (her expert eye could tell even at a distance) an expensive suit. She thought he looked “interesting,” as she later recalled, but just then one of the men beside herasked her to dance. She declined. Then his friend asked her, and she rejected him, too. A voice behind her said, “I’m the pinch hitter, since everyone else struck out.”
    She turned and saw the well-dressed man who had just walked in. He told her his name was Jan Schlichtmann, and then he asked if she’d ever heard of him.
    She thought that was a most audacious question. “Why? Are you