The purpose of class action lawsuits is to give the common man the ability to take on the largest corporate or private entities, who can afford the very best legal services, and have a chance of redressing the wrong done by these entities (Clark, sec. 1). Without class action lawsuits, ordinary citizens acting individually would not have the means to challenge corporate and governmental wrongdoers.

A Civil Action provides an in depth account of the life of one class action suit. It explores the role of the lawyer in litigating situations, focusing on the critical factor of proving causality. It brings to light numerous pitfalls encountered by both the prosecution

Proving causality becomes even more difficult if the prosecution is faced with dishonest witnesses. In the Woburn case, extensive evidence supported the plaintiff's theory that Riley Tannery had polluted the land with TCE. Despite this comprehensive evidence, John J. Riley adamantly denied any wrongdoing. Schlichtmann was certain that Riley was lying, but he had no obvious way to prove that. "He hadn't been able to find any tannery witnesses who could testify to using TCE. And Riley had testified under oath that there were no records of the chemicals the tanner had used before 1979" (Harr 193). A dishonest witness such as Riley can be harmful to a case, since often there is no solid way to prove a person is lying. Unfortunately for Schlichtmann the trial had already ended by the time solid proof of Riley's dishonesty finally surfaced.

The attempt to link the harm to the behavior of the defendant produced its share of successes and failures for the Schlichtmann team. Not only did the plaintiffs have to prove that the corporations contaminated the water, but they also had to show that the contamination caused the leukemia and the other health problems. To do this they enlisted the help and expertise of numerous doctors and specialists. Naturally the defending side recruited their own set of experts. As in any case, each side is going to have an expert who will refute the testimony of the other side's expert. This is a normal part of arguing a case, but can cause confusion and complication on the part of the jurors.

Because of the lack of money on the part of the prosecution, an additional hurdle they faced was postponement of the trial date. Even though extra time meant more preparation, it also meant spending more money. "They were now half a million dollars over budget...Gordon figured they could make it to the trial... The only thing they couldn't afford, Gordon figured, was a postponement of the trial" (Harr 263). On the contrary, the defendants faced an opposite problem. It wasn't money they had run out of, but time. Facher was desperate for more time to get ready, and wanted the trial postponed. Both the possibility of a postponement and the issue of insufficient time to prepare were pitfalls that the prosecution and the defense, respectively, were faced with.

The judge's overestimation related to the four questions that he expected the jurors to answer. "The questions had the quality of a text that had been translated from English into Japanese and back again... These questions were all but impossible to understand" (Harr 369). By overestimating the juror

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Approximate Word count = 1759
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)