"A Civil Action" to be Retried at Smith College

On Tuesday, April 20, all the events, facts and testimony documented in Northampton author Jonathan Harr's best-selling "A Civil Action" will be reexamined in a staged trial at Smith College. Students in Geology 109, "The Environment," a course taught by Amy Rhodes, a lecturer in environmental sciences,will enact the trial from 7 to 10 p.m. in McConnell auditorium. The event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.

"A Civil Action," released as a John Travolta movie last year, tells the true story of a Woburn, Massachusetts, court case in which several families collectively brought charges against two local companies, W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods, accused of contaminating the local groundwater supply and causing high occurrences of leukemia among the families' children.

Harr visited Rhodes' class in March and spoke about his writing process and what his life was like during the arduous course of following the Woburn case.

Rhodes' class members, many of whom are nonscience majors, will take on the roles of the nonfiction novel's characters, some developing arguments supporting the Woburn families as lawyers for the prosecution, some as attorneys for the defense, others playing the roles of geology, medical, statistical and contaminant experts who have compiled information or will testify before the mock court.

Rhodes, who has focused on global warming, energy and other environmental issues in the past in her class, this year decided to study water-quality issues and groundwater contamination in conjunction with her personal research of water-quality and land-use issues related to the local Mill River watershed.

"While we discussed these issues in class the students were reading of a parallel situation in 'A Civil Action,'" says Rhodes. "By focusing on the book I aimed to tie a popular, nonfiction story with some basic geologic principles that relate to groundwater movement, human water supplies and, in this case, an apparent environmental health problem."

Rhodes emphasizes that by reviewing the facts in the case documented by Harr, her class may not necessarily arrive at the same conclusion as that of the real-life case. "The book provides the framework for the students to do their research. It sets up the problem that students need to solve. How they solve it depends on their own initiative. The verdict need not be the same as what occurred in the actual story. The students will have access to more recent data and a different judge presides."

The judge for Rhodes' class trial will be Tom Schwab, a retired corporate lawyer from Holyoke. A jury will be made up of students in Environmental Science 300, a senior seminar taught by lecturer Elizabeth Farnsworth.

April 14, 1999