A Civil Action

1

Schlichtmann makes his opening remarks. He outlines the plight and heartbreak of the Woburn families, and accuses Beatrice and Grace of heartlessly murdering their children. His speech rattles Jacobs and Mary Allen. Jacobs feels that he could practically see the moment when the jurors’ minds closed against his clients.

A lawyer named Michael Keating gives the opening statement for Grace. His statement is brief. He promises to prove that the amounts of dumped chemicals were too small to cause harm, and that TCE has a tenuous link to leukemia at best.

Facher speaks for over ninety minutes, although his remarks are nearly identical in substance to Keating’s. He is not a skilled orator and it is not his best performance. The jury is noticeably restless by the end of it.

2

Schlichtmann believes he will need no more than four weeks to complete this first piece of the trial, which is known as the “waterworks phase,” in which he will attempt to prove that Grace and Beatrice contaminated the groundwater, which then reached the wells by the late 1960s. He will rely primarily on two expert witnesses. The first is a geologist who will explain the proliferation of TCE and how it has occurred.