Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty.

Pe Benito

Chapter 1 Boston: July 1986

Jan Schlichtmann, a lawyer, was having a dream of a woman who had sat across from him
in the courtroom for the last five months as she was one of the jurors in a case he was
handling. In his dream, he was standing next to her in the midst of a dense forest together
with the other jurors. She seemed to be pondering over which path in the forest she should
go as Schlichtmann was exhorting her to choose the direction he wanted her to take, yet
she remained undecided. The dream remained unresolved because he was awakened by
a phone call pertaining to the repossession of his Porsche car as his automobile loan was
several months in arrears.

Almost half an hour later, a sheriff came to his front door with some documents dealing with
the repossession of the Porsche. He told the sheriff he would get the car parked three
blocks away. As Schlichtmann was walking along the street noticing the people he passed
by on the way, he perceived that his future or perhaps even his life hung in the balance
while everyone around him was living their lives unperturbed.

Schlichtmann came back with the car and immediately handed the keys to the sheriff who
at once removed the license plate and unloaded all Schlichtmanns personal things stuffed
in the dashboard and the backseat of the Porsche. Among those articles found in the car
were some law books and several transcripts of depositions in the civil action of Anne
Anderson, et al., v. W. R. Grace & Co., et al., which led to the sheriffs knowledge of
Schlichtmann being a lawyer for the case. Before the sheriff drove away with the Porsche
that Schlichtmann had just driven less than five thousand miles in almost two years of
owning it, the sheriff made a remark that Anne Andersons case must have been a tough
one, which made them both laughed.

Two days later, Schlichtmann dressed in his favorite suit with an Hermes tie which he
considered lucky, he walked to the federal courthouse in downtown Boston as he had no
money for a cab. While walking, the precariousness of ones position in life suddenly
dawned on him. He was close to being a homeless as he was not only in arrears on his
mortgages but he was also facing a lawsuit for his failure to make a single maintenance
payment in his condominium association. After seventy-eight days of trial, all the money
was gone and the law firm is in the red. If he lost this case, Schlichtmann would be sunk so
deeply into debt that it would take five years for him to climb back to even. Oddly though,
Schlichtmann was not at all concerned about money. He was more apprehensive to the
fact that if he lost this case, he would lose something far greater than his money, and that
was his confidence as he had staked too much of himself on this one case.

Schlichtmann tarried at a courtroom corridor and at around eight oclock, the jurors had
concluded their deliberations and walked past Schlichtmann as he gazed down the floor
but from the corners of his eyes he meticulously studied their demeanor to guess their
mood. The sound of their footsteps receded till Schlichtmann was all by himself again.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 2 - Woburn: Summer 1966

Woburn was a city of thirty-six thousand situated twelve miles north of Boston. Its first
commercial enterprise had been a tannery, built by the Wyman brothers in 1648 and it was
followed by one tannery after another till the city was nicknamed as Tan City. In 1853
Eatons Chemical factory was built in northern Woburn, along the banks of the Aberjona
River, supplying chemicals to the tanneries. The chemical factory was known as the largest
chemical plants in the country. By the end of 1960s, the tanning industry in Woburn had
been eclipsed by competition from abroad and Eatons Chemical factory was taken over by
Monsanto. W. R. Grace, another chemical giant, which built a small plant on land that had
once been an orchard.

Anne and Charles Anderson moved in Woburn in 1965 and it was when the people in east
Woburn had started to observed that there was something unusual about the water. The
moment of change began when wells G and H went online and began pumping water to
serve homes in the east of Woburn and, to a much lesser extent, those homes in the north
and central sections. Wells G and H had been periodically shut down and opened due to
the complaints that bombarded the City Officials pertaining to the odor, rust-colored, and
strong chemical taste of the water. The wells were permanently shut down in 1979 when
half a miles from the said wells, 184 barrels of industrial waste were found to be dumped
on a vacant land northeast of Woburn. Both of the wells were tested and found to be
heavily contaminated with several suspected carcinogens, including trichloroethylene,
terrachloroethylene and three other contaminants all of which are used as industrial
solvent.

Back in the winter of 1972, Jimmy Anderson, the youngest child of Anne and Charles
Anderson was diagnosed to be suffering from acute lymphocytic leukemia. Through
neighbors and Bruce Young, Woburn Trinity Church reverend, Anne discovered more than
a dozen cases of children living in the small town of Woburn, Massachusetts were afflicted
with Leukemia. The notion that each case shared some common cause began to obsess
her. She thought that only the water and the air were the two things they all shared. She
confided her observation to Dr. John Truman who was at first reluctant to accept her
suspicion but eventually referred her to Dr. Clark Heath of the Centers for Disease Control,
which eventually led to the investigation of a possible leukemia cluster.

Bruce Young, through the aid of Donna Robbins whose son died of Leukemia in 1979,
invited the other parents whose children either died of Leukemia or were suffering from the
same afflictions, to consult Joe Mulligan, a Boston lawyer. Mulligan, upon knowing that that
twelve children, eight of which living within a half-mile radius, and six of them living almost
next door to each other, were all with Leukemia and contaminated drinking water, gave a
remark that the case is almost res ipsa loquitur, a legal term which means the thing speaks
for itself. They signed his firm to a contingency contract to pursue a suit against anyone
responsible for the contamination of the local wells. Jimmy Anderson died in 1981 but
several other deaths in Woburn had occurred since 1972 and all these children suffered the
same fate. In early 1981, the Center for Disease Control issued a report on the Woburn
cancer cluster that showed the cancer rate was at least seven times higher than normal,
but did not definitively connect the well contamination with the leukemia cases.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 3: The Lawyer

As a youth, Jan Schlichtmann had not thought highly of the legal profession but his father
saw in him a gift for argument as he had a passionate desire to persuade others to his own
point of view, an attribute, which his father thought, would make him a successful lawyer.
After graduating philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Schlichtmann, started
selling insurance but found himself wanting to do something that would benefit the society.
His search made him land on a job at American Civil Liberties Union, in which he handled a
case involving a group of nuns and welfare mothers gathering before the State House to
protest the governors cuts in the welfare aid. As he was working on this case, he
experienced a profound revelation that lawyering was the highest calling a man could
aspire to, for which reason he obtained a law degree at Cornell Law School.

His yearning of becoming a country lawyer empowered him to open an office of his own
and began working on sundry legal matters till he was broke. Fortunately, he got hold of a
case about a three-year old boy named Stuart Eaton who drowned in a gravel pit on a land
owned by a construction company. On the last day of the trial, the judge insinuated that
settling the case for seventy-five thousand dollars was fair but Schlichtmann opted to spurn
the idea. The trial concluded with the juror granting $250,000 for the Eatons, plus another
fifty thousand dollars in interest accumulated since the time of Stuarts death. His next case
involves the estate of one of the passengers of the single-engine Piper Arrow, which
crashed into Long Island Sound. The other two passengers were being represented by
Reed & Mulligan. With Schlichtmann and Reed collaborating on the case, they brought it to
an end of settling the case for a sum close to the policy limit only three months after the
accident.

Never in the history of Reed and Mulligan had a case been put together so swiftly. Reed
began to treat Schlichtmann as a son and wished him to look through other cases in the
office that needed work. The Woburn case had been neglected at the firm, and
Schlichtmann began working on it. He worked closely with Kevin Conway at the firm, who
warned him that the Woburn case was a black hole as there were a lot of questions still
left unanswered and the absence of proof that the chemicals had caused the leukemia.

As the statute of limitations was fast approaching, Schlichtmann teamed up with Trial
Lawyers for Public Justice, a non-profit firm in Washington, D.C., as suggested by
Reverend Young. The public interest law firm had been long looking for an environmental
case to pursue. Schlichtmann turned the case over to the firm but stayed on as local
counsel with an agreement that they would split equally the costs of preparing the case.
They filed a complaint eight days before the statute of limitations ran in May 1982, claiming
that Beatrice Foods and the W.R. Grace Company were responsible for contaminating the
wells and thereby causing the leukemia cluster in Woburn.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 4 - Rule 11

Jerome Facher had been a professor in trial practice at Harvard Law School for the past
twenty years. When Facher, himself was a third year law student at Harvard in the late
1940s, he only spoke aloud in class fewer than a dozen times. In fact, when other students
responded to a professors query, Facher would say to himself, My God, I didnt think of
that. Nevertheless, he had become an experienced trial lawyer and the chairman of the
litigation department at the Boston firm of Hale and Dorr, a law firm with two hundred
lawyers. His firm represented Beatrice Foods, which owned the Riley Tannery north of
Woburn. He received the Woburn case on his desk in the last week of May 1982 and had
the impression that there was nothing simple about the complaint but the burden of trying to
prove allegations would not only be daunting but also costly.

William Cheeseman was a senior partner at the Boston firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot, the law
firm that represented W.R. Grace Co.,. Cheeseman specialized in pre-trial maneuvering but
was not good at jury trial work. He had a reputation of finding astute ways to kill lawsuits in
their infancy with motions of demurrer or summary judgment, which he intended to do the
same with the Woburn case. Hence, when one of W.R. Grace executives showed
Cheeseman a video tape of Schlichtmanns press conference announcing the lawsuit,
which he found highly unprofessional as it was violative of the Canons of Professional
Ethics to make public inflammatory comments about evidence of the Woburn case, he
desired to teach Schlichtmann a painful lesson. Initially, he removed the case from the state
Superior Court to the federal court since W.R. Grace had headquarters operating across
the entire country, hence entitled to federal jurisdiction. Subsequently, he received
information regarding a privilege communication between Hale and Dorr and its client
Beatrice which seemed like an apt description of barratry committed by Schlichtmann.
Cheeseman, then, filed a filed a Rule 11 motion, a rule intended to curb frivolous and
irresponsible lawsuit, against Schlichtmann and the firm in an effort to end the case
immediately. The motion charged Schlichtmann with filing a frivolous and unfounded
lawsuit and barratry as he allegedly solicited people to join the lawsuit.

The judge, Walter Jay Skinner, did not entertain the charge of barratry on the ground that
he cannot take an in camera affidavit (an affidavit which the court will review in private) on
matter that involves Schlichtmann and his reputation. As for the Rule 11 motion, despite
Schlichtmann persistent refusal to submit himself to cross-examination by Cheeseman on
the theory that doing so would violate his obligations to his clients, the cross-examination
was still conducted but the questions were submitted to Judge Skinner who asked the
questions himself as requested by Schlichtmann. Judge Skinner denied the Rule 11 motion
explaining that the rule may not be used to harass serious litigant whose claim may depend
upon circumstantial evidence and may not fully developed at the time the complaint is filed.
The EPA reports constituted sufficient grounds for filing a complaint.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 5 - Orphans and Dogs

The Woburn case languished in the files as Schlichtmann was so engrossed with
other cases that made his career on the rise. After successfully negotiating a large
settlement in a big hotel fire case, and seeing the credits and most of the proceeds
went to his senior partner Reed, who had little to do with the case, Schlichtmann
decided to leave Reed & Mulligan and started his own firm. Kevin Conway and Bill
Crowley went with him.

In the new firm, Conway served as the firms gatekeeper as he decided what cases
were worth investing. He quickly rejected cases that were patently frivolous and he
called such cases dogs. There were also cases which he considered orphans and
these were cases that looked as if they might have some merit but that for one reason
or another had circulated among several law firms, rejected by one and passed on to
another. As the Woburn case was ignored by Conway and forgotten by Schlichtmann,
it became an orphan in its own right. A classic orphan case crossed Conways desk
and arrested his attention. It was about a young man, named Carney who suffered
whiplash through a motor accident but went home completely crippled because of a
massive infection. Conway was amazed how a minor automobile accident could have
resulted in such a medical nightmare. Hence, he adopted this orphan. Carney was the
new firms first major case, and Schlichtmann spent more than two hundred thousand
dollars and six months preparation for it Schlichtmann, rejected a one million dollar
settlement but won the case with $4.7 million verdict. The Carney case had not only
given Schlichtmann plenty of money but also a new measure of confidence, which
made him feel ready for the Woburn case.

Though the Woburn case had lain dormant for over a year, a Harvard study had been
conducted since the spring of 1981 and came up with a result showing that people
exposed to wells G and H had suffered a number of adverse health effects, and the
study concluded that there was a strong possibility the contamination was linked to the
leukemia cases. However, other doctors had an opinion that the Harvard study was
seriously flawed.

William Cheeseman, through the aid of two doctors who signed lengthy affidavits
stating that there existed no medically accepted evidence to support the opinion of the
Harvard study, filed a motion for summary judgment, alleging that the plaintiffs could
not prove their allegations scientifically, and therefore the case could not go to a jury.
However, Judge Skinner found summary judgment was clearly inappropriate since the
factual issue of causation is the subject of the heated dispute of the case. Cheeseman
later impleaded another defendant, Unifirst, which also had a manufacturing plant
near the wells. Unifirst quickly settled with Schlichtmann for just over a million dollars,
and the Woburn families agreed to use a large portion of that settlement to finance the
rest of the case against W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 6 - Discovery
Both sides began conducting depositions. The very first one to be asked by the
defense was Richard Aufiero, whose three-year old son, died of Leukemia on their way
to the hospital a few years back. Richard could not contain his tears as Facher drew
out the details relating to his sons death. This made Facher conclude that he could not
win the case in front of a jury if the families were allowed to testify as the entire
courtroom, maybe even the judge, would be in tears as each of the family had their
own tragic story to tell.

Schlichtmann began his own depositions with Shalline, the head of safety and
maintenance at Grace Woburn Plant. Nothing was taken out of Shalline that would be
beneficial for Schlichtmann since Shalline professed nothing but denials and
ignorance. As for the deposition of Barbas, the painter for Grace, his statement quite
contradict the one made by Shalline but Schlichtmann could get nothing more out of
him but wonder as to how odd it was for Barbas to get his first and only promotion just
before his deposition.

The next deposition taken was that of Al Love, a former cleaner of metal parts for
Grace Plant. He lived just around the corner from Anne Andersons house. At the end
of his deposition, he felt angry and confused with the way Cheeseman acted when
Schlichtmann had asked about the health of his family. He believed he was on the
wrong side of the whole thing so a week after his deposition, he talked to Schlichtmann
again, this time telling ruefully everything he knew. According to him, some chemicals
had been dumped into the ground, and that some managers who had been deposed
early in the case had withheld information or lied. A man named Pasqueriella, former
worker at Grace Plant, attested Loves statement. Based on this, Schlictmann notified
the U.S. Attorney, and a federal investigation began, which suddenly made Barbas
claim he suddenly remembered something. Cheeseman gave Schlichtmann a ring
telling him if he would want to depose Barbas again. With all that transpired,
Schlichtmann felt he had uncovered more than enough to make his case as further
discovery showed that a significant amount of chemicals had been disposed of directly
into the ground.

Schlichtmann deposed John Riley, manager of the Riley Tannery, who denied using
TCE and denied any knowledge of polluting the 15 acres of land around the factory.
Schlichtmann, however, found a killer document that proved Riley had not told the
truth at his depositions. The document contained reports of A.C. Bolde in connection to
repeated complaints about the terrible and foul odors coming from around the factory.
This led to the depositions of other townspeople showing that dumping had taken place
for years on the 15 acres Riley owned, but Schlichtmann was not able to uncover
much of anything in terms of documentation or written evidence to prove that the
dumping included that of TCE.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 7 - The Woodshed

Schlichtmann, Conway and Crowleys office had become crowded with volumes of
deposition transcripts, maps, and charts all pertaining to Woburn case. The office used
to work efficiently with nine people but now the staff had doubled in size.
Schlichtmanns firm collected medical records from as many of the family members as
possible as suggested by Doctor Shirley Conibear, a specialist in occupational and
environmental medicine.

Schlichtmann hired more medical experts to review the documents and to potentially
testify at the trial. The bill for the services rendered by these experts cost an arm and a
leg. The firms bills related to the case mounted, mostly because Schlichtmann spared
no expense on experts, medical tests, geological tests of the dump sites, and exhibits
to be prepared for trial. With five months left before trial, the firm had spent almost a
million dollars on the case but it still need to borrow another half a million to continue to
finance the case.

With twelve medical experts, who each conducted their medical examinations of all the
families involved in the case, Schlichtmann felt confidence that he now had compelling
evidence of chronic solvent poisoning. And though the scientific evidence yielded that
TCE causing leukemia was weak, there was no doubt that exposure to the
contaminated water had exacerbated leukemias.

Five months away from trial but Schlichtmanns experts were not yet ready to be
deposed. Hence, he agreed to let Facher and Cheeseman take the depositions of
three experts but only as to factual matters. However, during the depositions of the
three experts, Schlichtmann got very furious and objected strongly to certain lines of
questioning as the defense lawyers did not adhere to what both parties had all
agreed not to pursue until a later date. The defense lawyers were persistent in asking
questions beyond the sole purpose of the deposition they have agreed upon. For this
reason, Schlichtmanns tirades echoed in the deposition room. This led to a number
of motions against Schlichtmann, one of which is file by Jerome Facher asking Judge
Skinner to censure him.

Judge Skinner strongly rebuked Schlichtmann for his unseemly behavior in the
depositions, but did not censure him. Schlichtmann felt relieved as he had narrowly
escaped disaster for he thought that with Judge Skinners very angry expression on
his face, he would be taken out of the case.

Following the conference with the judge, which Facher called the Woodshed
conference, he attempted to begin negotiations with Schlichtmann, who refused to
identify a number at which he would settle, even after Facher offered a settlement on
the order of twenty million dollars.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 8: Billion-Dollar Charlie

Since Judge Skinner was a regular reader of his alma matters famous Law Review,
the hypothetical case called the Blue Bus by Charles Neeson, a famous professor in
evidence and criminal law, it was put in his mind that Schlichtmann may use statistical
analysis to prove causation. He worried that evidence which would not be the proper
basis for the verdict becomes proper because an expert would declare it to be so. For
this reason, Schlichtmann felt that the judge is on the verge of excluding the Harvard
Health Study his valuable piece of evidentiary puzzle.

Feeling that Judge Skinner was already deposed to rule in favor of the defense,
Schlichtmann decided to seek advice from a law professor who could help him figure
out how to get the Harvard Health Study into evidence. Schlichtmann was very
fortunate because Rikki Kliemann, a female lawyer who is romantically interested in
Schlichtmann, happened to be acquainted with Charles Neeson. Schlichtmann lost no
time in persuading Neeson to pay interest in the Woburn case. Nesson decided to join
the legal team as a consultant and gave an entirely new light on the case. Hence, all
the qualms that Schlichtmanns firm had felt on the idea of Neeson joining them
vanished. In one meeting, Neeson suggested that the case could be worth far more
than they had originally thought. If punitive damages were given, the verdict could
reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the ten or twenty million the
lawyers had been discussing previously. Even the judge mused at one point that the
case could be worth an astronomical amount. Philips, one of Schlichtmanns financial
consultant, called Neeson Billion-Dollar Charlie in a sardonic way.

Depositions continued, and the defense had an exhaustive list of items allegedly
containing carcinogen. The plaintiffs were asked if they had consumed items on the list
in order to suggest that inasmuch as the cause of childhood leukemia was laragely a
mystery to medical science, dozens of substances used by the families might just as
likely have caused the Woburn illness as the contaminated water.

Schlichtmann deposed quite a number of expert witnesses the defense lawyers had
found. These experts opposed Schlichtmanns experts, claiming that TCE and other
chemicals in the water were not present in sufficient concentrations to cause the
effects observed in the Woburn children. Much of the testimony focused on the lack of
proof of causation, because no one had ever discovered what caused acute
lymphocytic leukemia in children. Although most of these experts disagreed there was
not enough TCE in the water to cause problems, they all concede that TCE can cause
cardiac, neurological, and immunological problems. Meanwhile, the EPA began pump
tests at wells G and H to see if groundwater from the factory sites had reached the
wells, which yielded to a positive result. Schlichtmanns finance guru Gordon
calculated that they had already spent over $1.8 million for the case but thought that
the firm could survive until trial as long as there was no postponement.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 9 - Fachers Plea

Cheesemans and Fachers firm shared the cost for the service of a Litigation Science
which only told them after the research that they could not hope to win the Woburn
case. There were only three weeks left and they would begin selecting a real jury and
Facher had never expected that Schlichtmann would get this far. As the scheduled pre-
trial conference was approaching, Facher realized that he was not ready to try the
case. There were 23,337 pages of deposition transcripts and he had not time to sit
down and read them. There were, in fact, thirty six more that had not been transcribed
yet. In fact, there were lots of experts, whose name he did not know. He felt the need
for another six months to prepare.

Although he had already asked Judge Skinner for a continuance which was not taken
seriously, he decided to seek a continuance again but this time in the form of a
personal affidavit. He filed a 20-page affidavit, which took him a week working on and
off between depositions. He elaborated the complexity of the case and the amount of
evidence to be sorted, and asked for a seven-month continuance. At the hearing,
Judge Skinner vehemently refused to grant the continuance despite Fachers pleas.

Instead of a continuance, Judge Skinner insinuated the idea of a settlement. Hence,

Schlictmanns team prepared a settlement demand. Their demand totaled $175 million
in a structured settlement over 30 years. The settlement was offered in hotel banquet
hosted by the prosecution team. Cheeseman was flabbergasted when he learned of
the total amount being demanded. Jerome Facher asked to keep the hotel- provided
pen, and walked out of the room, followed by the other defense lawyers.

Jury selection began two weeks later with both parties giving their peremptory
challenges as the judge asked questions. The selection came to a close with Judge
Skinner giving a remark that they are not entitled to a jury of their liking but to an
impartial jury. Afterwards, Judge Skinner held a conference about the structure of the
trial. Schlichtmann had expected to present his case however he saw fit. Charlie
Neeson proposed a test case of one family but Jerome Facher proposed a
bifurcated trial, which would deal first on the issue of whether the companies had
polluted the groundwater, and then the second phase would deal on the issue of
medical causation. Judge Skinner decided to use Fachers plan and Facher was
happy about it. Schlichtmann, on the other hand, could see an advantage in this plan
as he believed that the jury would see that both Grace and Beatrice properties were
contaminated.

Just before trial, a member of Fachers team, named Jacob tried again to settle with
Schlichtmann. He offered $4 million for the dismissal of the case against Beatrice
Foods. When Schlichtmann refused, he offered to try to get $8 million. Schlichtmann
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

decided to counter-offer before taking the offer to his clients. He countered for $18
million, but never heard back from Jacob again.

Chapter 10 - The Trial (Part 1)

The trial began with a packed courtroom as the crowd was elbow to elbow in their
seats. Schlichtmanns opening statement was extremely powerful leaving the defense
lawyers worried. Michael Keating, the new counsel for Grace even gave a remark that
it was Schlichtmanns finest moment. Michael Keatings opening statement was quite
brief as it dealt only with Schlichtmanns accusation. He admitted that although
Graces employees had spread small amounts of TCE on the ground to evaporate
but it was just small amounts and it had never gotten to Wells G and H, and that even
if it had gotten there, it could not possibly have caused anyone any harm. Fachers
opening statements focused on the lack of proof of contamination by the companies.

Schlichtmann had already spent many days before the start of trial going over the
substance of the John Drobinskis, testimony. Part of his training was should he be
asked if he is paid for his testimony, his reply should be that he is compensated for his
time. Drobinski had spent almost a year with his team mapping out every foot of
Beatrice and Grace properties. Hence, he would take the witness stand and testify
that the Beatrice property adjacent to the tannery had been contaminated for at least
twenty-five years.

Schlichtmann presented his case against the companies, with Fachers frequent
objections. He overcame most of Fachers objections, but when Facher objected to
Drobinskis expert opinion as to the time of the contamination as he asserted that
there was no proper scientific foundation for this opinion, he even asked the judge to
exclude Drobinskis opinion, thankfully Nesson warned that such a ruling would be a
grave and costly mistake since Under Rule 702 of the Rules of Evidence, Drobinski
met all the proper qualifications as an expert and it was therefore up to the jury, not
the judge, to decide whether they believed Drobinskis testimony. In the end, Facher
was able to to cast doubt on the veracity of everything Drobinski had said by
brandishing a small, but perhaps telling, inconsistency pertaining to his educational
background.

Schlichtmann called John Riley, the owner of the tannery, to the witness stand, with
the intention of exposing all his lies through his killer document which he obtained
from an agent named Bolde. Schlichtmann was unable to get anything useful out of
during most of his examinations but he succeeded in making Riley cracked up when
he asked him as to when he destroyed his records, which made Riley replied I dont
know when those records were destroyed, but I will repeat to you, sir, again and
again, we never used trichloroethylene . As the trial went on, the firm has started to
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

be in the red. The phones were cut off at one point, and creditors were in constant
communication demanding payment.

Chapter 10 - The Trial II

Eight weeks into trial, a groundwater expert named George Pinder was called by
Schlichtmann to testify about how the contaminants had traveled through the
groundwater to the wells. On cross-examination, however, Facher used Pinders
deposition to contradict many points Pinder had raised on the witness stand by
dissecting Pinders calculations and explanations, which were in some parts clearly
mistaken. It turned out, however, that Pinders opinion that the wells drew water from the
contaminated land was later shown to be correct by an EPA report, but the report would
be published two years after the trial.

Facher had only three witnesses one of which was Thomas Menin, a city engineer who
had insisted that the wells were safe. Menin, however, came around as incompetent and
failed to connect with the jury. To make matters worse, Menin was eventually diagnosed
with leukemia a month after his testimony and Schlichtmann had planned to use the fact
at the second stage of the trial. Menin died a few months later. The second and third
witness of Facher tried to prove that, based on bacteria and other microorganisms in the
soil, Beatrice could not have contaminated the water that is the subject of the trial.
However, the methods by which the said testimony was based were not tried and tested.
Nevertheless, Judge Skinner permitted it to remain.

Schlichtmanns firm was shuffling whatever money they can get their hands on to keep
the case afloat because the bank would no longer grant them loan.

John Guswa, a ground water expert was presented by Keating. Guswa was able to
connect with the jury and was convincing enough to manifest that the case against Grace
seemed perilous but he made a mistake by providing Neeson too much information,
which Neeson was able to exploit in order to show that Guswa was not presenting the
correct information in regards to how fast the water was draining from the lands of Grace
and into the wells.

Judge Skinner decided to limit the question to the jury as to the liability of Beatrice to
anything that happened after 1968 as that was the year that Riley learned that his toxic
wastes could contaminate the land. At the last phrase of the trial, Schlichtmanns closing
arguments was interrupted numerous times with objections from Facher. It was more
than an hour and a half when he got to the end of his oration. He told the jury that the
evidence is complicated and that it might be easy to get distracted and go down the
wrong path or take a wrong turn but ended his statement by telling the jury Please
dont, with his voice sounding like a plea.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Chapter 11: The Vigil

After the final arguments, Judge Skinner provided the jurors with instructions that
would govern their efforts to reach a verdict and reminded them that they were still
jurors in the case and should not discuss their views of it. Six regular jurors were sent
off to begin their deliberations.

All of the court room spectators drifted away except Jan Schlichtmann, who stood in
front of the courtroom door like a sentinel. Jan Schlichtmanns vigil caught the attention
of the lawyers for Beatrice and Grace so they decided that they, too, ought to hang
around. Two weeks worn on and still there was no sign the jurors had come to a
decision.

The day the jurors formal deliberations began, the clerk brought all the evidence up to
the jury room and the list of questions that had been devised for them to answer. The
deliberation lasted over two weeks, in part because of confusion over the questions
they were expected to answer.

The jurors read the questions several times, trying to parse the compound sentences.
As to the first question which was whether the chemicals from Beatrice had gotten to
the wells before May 22, 1979, the date the wells had closed, four of the jurors that
Beatrice was guilty, one abstain and the remaining one voted against the majority vote.
The same question was posed for Grace and the results were only slightly different.

Heated arguments fired up among the jurors till they decided to admit to themselves
that they were hopelessly deadlocked, which meant that the lawyers would have to try
the case again. However, the news that Vogel, the jurors foreman, was scheduled for
a by-pass operation had helped broke the deadlock.

With Vogel in charge, the jurors had drawn up two charts, one for Grace and one for
Beatrice. With the help of the others, he had listed all the evidence for and against
each company. The Grace chart clearly showed a preponderance of the evidence
against the company but Beatrice could not be held liable by the preponderance
standard.

As for the month and year that the chemicals from Grace had arrived at the wells in
substantial amounts, the jurors agreed that they did not know the answer to that. For
the third question which was whether Grace had failed to fulfill any duty of due care to
the plaintiffs, they all answered Yes. The fourth question asked them for a date, and
they came up with September 1973, which meant that three of the children who had
developed leukemia before 1973 would probably be dropped from the case in the
second phase of the trial.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Though Schlichtmanns firm harvested congratulations from people, Schlichtmann was

still very much disappointed. With hollow-eyed and in a dull, uninflected voice, he told
the families he would appeal the Beatrice verdict and assured the families that they
were still all in the case together. His words of assurance relieved those families whose
claims were in jeopardy but they still all knew that this argument looked weak
compared with what they had started with. Schlichtmanns partners realized that their
only hope for victory was to settle the case.

Chapter 12: The Negotiation

After the jury verdict in the trials first phase, Schlichtmann and his partners met to
discuss what they would settle the case for. By this time, the firm was already in the
red and had since been avoiding any type of correspondence from creditors. They
took of their situation and realized that moving up to the medical phase of the trial
would be a roll of the dice for them. To make matters worse, their financial condition
was precarious in the extreme. Hence, Schlichtmanns team sat on the table to
discuss their squeal point, which eventually, they never came up with.

They met with an executive from W.R. Grace and presented a demand totaling $35
million and the executive responded that it was too high but it was a constructive
proposal. They met again in New York the following week. The executive offered them
$6.6 million, to which Schlichtmann and his partners were very much disappointed
but they insisted that he take it, or at least ask the families, but Schlictmann refused.
Conway knew that Schlichtmann was willing to take everything a step further than
anybody else because he loved the edges. Although Conway knew he would stick
around with Schlichtmann should he decides to go to trial, he still hoped
Schlichtmann would not.

At the airport going back to Boston, Keating sensed through his conversation with
Schlichtmann that he was desperate to settle either and this he immediately reported
to Eustis, the executive.

In a meeting with Keating back in Boston, Schlichtmann learned that Eustis concern
was not about the amount of the settlement but about the shark effect, which means
that big settlement would induce other personal injury lawyers to seek clients in
Woburn and file dozens of lawsuits, hoping to settle for a lot of money. Schlichtmann
saw this as an opportunity.

After another week, Schlichtmann met again with the executive, and presented a
demand of $16 million. The executive took several days to confer with the board of
directors, but never returned an offer. Schlichtmanns firm was deep in debt and on
the edge of bankruptcy.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

At the beginning of the second phase of the trial, the W.R. Graces defense team
submitted motions to dismiss some of the plaintiffs whose children had gotten sick
before 1973. On the day of the expected ruling, Schlichtmann asked the judge to wait
to give them a chance to settle the case. The judge agreed. W.R. Grace came back
with an offer of $8 million, which Schlichtmanns firm accepted.

Chapter 13 - Blindmans Buff

The eight-million dollar settlement was approved by Judge Skinner and the case
against W. R. Grace officially ended. The settlement money was divided among the
families after $2.6 million paid off the expenses of the trial, and $2.2 million went to
the firm as legal fees. Each family received just under $500,000. Schlichtmann
always said that once money was put on the table, things would turn ugly. No one
voiced any complaint at that meeting with the families but afterward, as Donna and
Anne drove home to Woburn together, Anne expressed anger at the size of
Schlichtmanns fee.

The EPA report came out after the trial, and showed that both Beatrice Foods and
W.R. Grace had contaminated the well water. In preparing an appeal, Schlictmanns
partners found a document that had not been given to them during trial. The report
showed significant testing by W.R. Grace at the site that revealed evidence bolstering
the plaintiffs case. The report stated that groundwater from under the tannery flowed
to the east, toward the city wells, through very porous soil, exactly as Schlichtmanns
expert, Pinder, had predicted. If he had had this report, thought Schlichtmann, the trial
would have been a different event altogether. Schlictmann sought a new trial based on
the withholding of the document, but Judge Skinner denied the motion. The appeal
decision came back upholding the verdict but requiring Judge Skinner to delve further
into the issue of the withheld report.

The misconduct hearing lasted two months and involved 26 witnesses. In the process,
Schlichtmann revealed that John Riley had lied on the stand during trial and withheld
other documents. At the end of the hearing, Judge Skinner found that Riley had
committed perjury, his personal lawyer Mary Ryan had committed professional
misconduct, but that Facher and his team had not. The judge also found that
Schlichtmann had violated Rule 11, and therefore refused to sanction Mary Ryan.
Schlichtmann appealed to the Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court but was
refused by both.

Schlichtmann eventually filed for bankruptcy, owing over $1.2 million to various
creditors. At about the same time, the EPA filed suit against Beatrice and W.R. Grace
to pay for a $69 million clean-up effort in the Woburn area. In the end, Beatrice also
consented to pay its share of the cleanup costs. W. R. Grace was indicted by the U.S.
Attorney for lying in its statements to the EPA.
 Mariline M. Lee LSOCRES Atty. Pe Benito

Schlichtmann flew to Hawaii on borrowed money and spent a few days in cheap
hotels. He then swam out into the ocean as far as he could and nearly decided to
commit suicide, but changed his mind and returned to land.