Copyright © 1999 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.

This Just In: A civil reaction

Schlichtmann, Woburn mother to speak at forum

By Dan Kennedy

Donna Robbins, a Woburn mother who lost her son Robbie to leukemia, and Jan Schlichtmann, the lawyer who represented Robbins and seven other families in the trial featured in the book and movie A Civil Action, will lead a town meeting-style event titled "Lessons from Woburn" on January 7.

The forum will take place the day after the film has its gala Boston premiere, and the day before its nationwide rollout. Robbins says that with the movie drawing the public's attention to the legal case, she hopes she can help focus attention on the actual events behind it.

"Hopefully they'll hear something more about how it all started," she says. "Naturally, the movie's got a lot of Hollywood to it, but that's to be expected. My goal right now is to tell what led up to it."

The case grew out of the 1979 discovery that two of Woburn's drinking water wells were contaminated with industrial solvents. Schlichtmann sued two companies, W.R. Grace & Company and Beatrice Foods Company, in federal court, charging them with polluting the wells. Following a 78-day trial in 1986, a jury found that Grace had negligently contaminated the wells, but dismissed the case against Beatrice. Grace settled with the families for $8 million after Judge Walter Jay Skinner threw out the verdict on technical grounds and ordered a new trial.

Also speaking at the January7 event will be US Representative Ed Markey (D-Malden), who in the 1980s helped write pioneering legislation to clean up toxic waste, and residents of Toms River, New Jersey, who are being represented by Schlichtmann in another toxic-waste case.

The forum will be held from 10 a.m. to noon in the Empire Ballroom of the Tremont Boston Hotel, 275 Tremont Street, Boston.