Published in the Asbury Park Press
By GINA BOTHNER
STAFF WRITER
In the early 1980s, Massachusetts attorney Jan Schlichtmann got involved with a legal battle that became a war.
That war lasted nine years, nearly destroying Schlichtmann emotionally, financially and personally.
"I was totally obsessed and consumed by it," he said yesterday. "It took over our practice."
The war centered on the community of Woburn, Mass., where a group of families alleged that various medical problems, including cancer, were caused by industrial pollutants in their water.
The story of that legal and personal crusade of Schlichtmann -- who now represents some families affected by the so-called cancer cluster in Toms River -- is depicted in the movie "A Civil Action," which opens today in New York and Los Angeles and nationwide Jan. 8.
The movie, "A Civil Action," stars John Travolta as Schlichtmann, and was based on the book of the same name by Jonathan Harr, an investigative journalist from Massachusetts. It opens nationwide Jan. 8.
Schlichtmann's firm had taken up the case of the Woburn families, battling two industrial giants, WR Grace and Beatrice Foods, which they believed to be responsible for the contamination.
"We had our victories and our defeats," he recalled. "It was nine years of war."
A jury cleared Beatrice Foods, but WR Grace was found responsible and settled with the families for $8 million, Schlichtmann said. Years later, the company agreed to fund a $70 million, 60-year cleanup of the contaminated site, after negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.
Despite the outcome, the damage had been done both to the families and to Schlichtmann, who retreated to Hawaii to recover.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health subsequently concluded that children exposed to the contaminated water in utero experienced a greater than normal chance of contracting leukemia.
"I've met (Travolta) on many occasions in L.A. and Massachusetts," said Schlichtmann, who served as a legal consultant on the film. "It was very interesting for me, and I was fascinated by his ability to convey my character.
"Hey, better him than Danny DeVito," he joked. "I was honored that he wanted to play my character."
Some Toms River residents have drawn similarities between the Woburn case and the cancer cluster here.
Dozens of children from Toms River have been diagnosed with cancers between 1979 and 1996, particularly leukemia, brain and central nervous system cancers, which are being investigated in a state epidemiological study.
Although a cause has yet to be determined, some parents suspect the water supply and question if a manufacturing byproduct from Union Carbide, the styrene acrylonitrile trimer found in two United Water Toms River wells, could be to blame.
Schlichtmann, a member of Thomas A. Kiley & Associates in Andover, Mass., and Mark Cuker and Esther Berezofsky, partners of the law firm Williams, Cuker and Berezofsky in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, have been representing 60 cancer cluster families.
According to Schlichtmann, the hard lessons learned from Woburn have not turned him off to fighting for the rights of families afflicted by possible environmental cancers. Instead, they have led him to take a different approach.
"People ask me, would I do it again, and my answer is yes, but I would do it differently," he said. "It's been a long process of embracing the past and applying the lessons I've learned. Apparently, the only way to resolve things is to work together."
Cuker, who got involved with the Toms River case after being contacted by area families familiar with his fight in the Pine Lake Park section of Manchester, where water contamination also occurred, said it is too early to tell how the Toms River situation will work out.
"The Woburn families' hope was that there would not be another Woburn," Schlichtmann said. "The one thing we have to recognize is that there are other Woburns. The question is, what do we do about them?"
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: December 25, 1998
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