Jonathan Harr’s, A Civil Action, published in 1995, is one of the best nonfiction legal thrillers ever written. It tells the riveting story of a complicated civil suit over environmental pollution that occurred in Woburn, Massachusetts. Not surprisingly, Harr’s book was adapted into a film of the same name that was released in 1998. John Travolta played the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, a character worthy of Shakespeare. Robert Duvall nearly steals the film as Jerry Facher, the lawyer for one of the corporate defendants.
Nearly 25 years later, the film is still a gold mine for Civil Procedure professors. In his review, Roger Ebert described A Civil Action as “John Grisham for grownups.” Schlichtmann is relentless in pursuing the case against the defendants, becoming so invested that nothing else seems to matter – an approach that has significant consequences for everyone around him as the case turns into an interminable trial. Facher, meanwhile, is a master litigator who wrings every advantage from the rules and courtroom procedures.
In this podcast, Associate Dean Rodger Citron moderates a discussion of A Civil Action with his colleagues Laura Dooley and Deseriee Kennedy.
Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.
Our guests today are Professor Laura Dooley and Professor Deseriee Kennedy.
Laura Dooley
Laura Dooley is a Professor of Law at Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, where she teaches Civil Procedure and Torts. She has published widely in top-tier academic journals, including the flagship journals at New York University, Vanderbilt, Cornell, and Illinois, among many others. Her work has been cited by both federal courts and the popular press, including the Wall Street Journal.
Deseriee Kennedy
Deseriee Kennedy is a Professor of Law at Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, where she teaches Civil Procedure, Family Law, Domestic Violence, and Health Law. Prior to joining Touro Law, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Tennessee College of Law. She is a co-author of the seminal treatise on New York Domestic Violence Law, which is updated yearly and published by Thomas-Reuters. Her scholarship has been published in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Arizona State Law Journal, Missouri Law Review, the Southern California Review of Law and Women’s Studies, and the Journal of Race, Gender and Class, among other journals.
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