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Civil and criminal action
Civil action and trial procedure
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A plaintiff is somebody that brings a case. In this case, it’s Ann Anderson, the Canes family ,Tombies, Sonas, Robins, and A Fieros in the film titled A Civil Action (1). There were 12 leukemia deaths over the past 15 years, 8 of them being children (1). Ann Anderson is just one of the victims that lost her son to leukemia. She open-mindedly wants to know if the water they were drinking had anything to do with it. There were complaints in the neighborhood that the water had a strange taste, consequently, she decides to gather the families that have lost loved ones. Jan Schlichtmann takes on this eight million dollar case. It forces Jan and his team to give up everything they have in order to win the case, including their house mortgages(1).
One prevalent theme found throughout the book is the conflict between finding the truth and the judicial process. The two are almost always incompatible with each other in the courtroom, and A Civil Action illustrates that quite well. The fight for the truth was taken over by trial tactics used by the defendant, whose goal was to keep the truth from getting out. It is natural for the plaintiff and the defendant to use tactics to create the verdict rather than using the facts of the case because both aim for success. Misinformation, partial truths, and hidden facts are common in the courtroom and one scene of A Civil Action shows how it can change the whole trial. People of the courtroom can manipulate the trial so the odds are in their favor. Rarely is truth ever the main focus.
While waiting for the court’s final decision, Facher proposes a final offer, “...20 million dollars. Now, that would put things into perspective for you, wouldn’t it?” [3]. Counting the established settlement between Beatrice and Schlichtmann as well as Grace and Schlichtmann, the closing payment would be a whopping $65 million. Instead of agreeing to this offer, Jan Schlichtmann sets his destiny, as well as his clients, by ripping the twenty dollars produced by Facher in half, ultimately declining the offer. Back in the courtroom, Judge Skinner rules, “With respect to W.R. Grace, the jury has answered ‘yes’ to question 1 regarding trichloroethylene contamination, requiring we proceed further in the case against Grace to a second stage of this trial. In regard to Beatrice, the jury has answered ‘no’ to question 1, in all it’s points pertaining to contamination. Which renders question 2 and 3 inapplicable.” [4] By losing Beatrice, Schlichtmann forfeited 45 million dollars, ultimately only gaining $375,000 for each of the families. All in all, Jan Schlichtmann was unable to provide the plaintiffs with a successful
Margaret Fuller was one of the most influential woman of her time. She was a very intelligent woman that had concurred three languages by the age of thirteen. She used her knowledge to open the eyes of many people. She was a true Transcendentalist. She was very vocal about her views on gender roles of the nineteenth century even though they were not considered traditional. She challenged the conventional gender roles of the men and women. She was not afraid to tell women to fight for their natural rights. Her audience was composed of both men and women. She makes sure to point out that when she speaks of men, she is referring to both men and women. One of her greatest literature written was The Great Lawsuit. It was
The movie, A Civil Action, relates to a true story of two corporation’s improper disposal of trichloroethylene and its consequences on a small town in Massachusetts. High incidences of leukemia arise and the affected families seek support to address the responsible parties by employing small firm, personal injury attorney, Jan Schlichtmann. Upon taking the case, he is greeted with unanswered questions and claims of improper hazardous waste disposal by local tanneries and corporations. The clients make clear that they are simply seeking ownership of those who caused the incidents and apologies for the committed actions that resulted in the deaths of their loved ones.
The claimant is a 6 year-old, Armenian female who arrived on time for her evaluation with the mother.
The movie “A Civil Action” released on January 8, 1999 provides viewers with an extraordinary story of the nightmare that occurred in Woburn Massachusetts in the late 1970’s. The people of this small town at the time had no idea what was going on until there were various cases of Leukemia in small children that ultimately resulted in the early passing of them. The people eventually had gone to find out that the drinking water in this small town was contaminated and there were many women that stepped in to get answers. This movie is a tremendously jaw dropping, eye opening account of a heartbreaking true story incident. There are various elements of negligence in this movie including, duty, legal cause, proximate cause and damages.
Civil Liability has more than one source. There are two sources of liabilities, civil wrong and unjust enrichment. But most importantly civil liability is to be responsible for debts or wrongdoing against another private party (http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/defenses-to-civil-liability.html). A Civil Wrong could arise from three different acts. It could arise from personal acts, acts of another, and from things. But, my main focus is personal acts. All these acts are considered as a civil wrong which is an action with a tort, an act against another person or their property, and, a breach of the terms of a contract (http://thelawdictionary.org/civil-wrong/). In order to prove that a person is liable for that certain act we should analyze the civil wrong elements which are , wrong, damage, and causation. A The second source of liability is unjust enrichment which is benefiting from the action or property of another without legal justification (http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/U/UnjustEnrichment.aspx).Unjust Enrichment could arise from a payment not due and a voluntary agency. Unjust Enrichment includes three elements which are loss, benefit, and no legal justification. Both liabilities have different understandings and have different aspects in viewing a case.
Jan Schlichtmann is the main character of this true story. As a prominent attorney from Boston, who has an ego to match his bank account, he seems obsessed to find a way to consistently find bigger settlements and make a name for himself in the legal community. Though slightly inexperienced, he seems to be a natural in the courtroom, and even more so in the "game" of out-of-court-settlements. Jan owed part of his success due to the fact he surrounded himself with people who "counterbalanced" his personality. It is through their support in most of this story that he was able to negotiate through the tribulations. But through a host of events, Jan ended up spearheading the Wo...
In the film, A Civil Action, Trial Procedure was shown throughout the entire movie. There are many steps that need to be completed before a verdict and judgment can be reached. These steps are the pleadings, methods of discovery, pretrial hearings, jury selection, opening statements, introduction of evidence, cross examinations, closing arguments, instructions to the jury, and the verdict and judgment. The case in this movie was actually called Anderson v. Cryovac. The plaintiffs are the Anderson family, the Gamache family, the Kane family, the Robbins family, the Toomey family, and the Zona family. The plaintiffs’ attorneys are Jan Schlichtmann, Joe Mulligan, Anthony Roisman, Charlie Nesson, and Kevin Conway. The two co- defendants are W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods. The two co-defendants’ attorneys are William Cheeseman, Jerome Facher, Neil Jacobs, and Michael Keating.
Who is the lawyer you may ask? What kind of person is the lawyer throughout the story? The lawyer doesn’t mention anything about himself except the fact of his job and age. He doesn’t even give his name nor the name of anyone in the story. Through the words that he speaks, the lawyer is a person who like to have structure. The enactment of dealing with people on a personal base is to much of a confrontation for lawyer. Through the ordeal of his interaction with each of his scriveners we learn that the lawyer plays it safe.
A Civil Action The movie A Civil Action brings up an interesting idea that many people in the public don't see or hear about very often. The idea that the big corporations often don't take into account the safety of the people that work for them or the people that live around the factories. These big corporations are run entirely by money and the idea of what things will cost and how much money they can possibly make. Too many times money is more important than the lives of human beings and the people that run these places only see in dollars and cents. The moral issues that this dilemma brings up are immense. This has been happening for centuries since the industrial revolution. Workers were subjected too harsh conditions and unsafe factories so that more goods could be produced. They had children as young as seven and eight years old working 15 hour days. In our modern times, toxic waste now plays a big part in the safety of people. The waste that these companies produce and dump under our noses don't seem to bother them in the least. The way microeconomics effects this must be fully explored to realize the way the corporate world thinks and acts. The goal of any corporation is to make the maximum profit that they can providing a good or service to the community while doing it as inexpensively as possible to them. Too many times producing these goods, toxic by-products are also produced.
As a plaintiff, Georgina (P) has suffered a legally-recognisable harm, as she broke several of her ribs and suffered from severe internal bleeding. Georgina then need to establish a duty of care owed by Andrew (D) to her.
Generally, the acceptance must be communicated to the proposer. If other method of communication is used to communicate acceptance, the postal rule will apply as exception to the general rule.
First, it is necessary to understand what “civil wrong and criminal wrong” is, so we can have a better climate to discuss what is at stake. A Civil wrong is “An action with a tort, an act against another person or their property, and, a breach of the terms of a contract”. (The law dictionary). On the other hand, a criminal wrong is the breaking of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction. That being said, society would address liability for civil wrong separately from criminal wrong because, in a civil wrong, the plaintiff stands to benefit from the compensatory damages as well from the punitive damages. When a plaintiff sues the defendant to court, and he is able to establish that a civil wrong has been committed against him, the damages that follow could well be an incentive that leads society to address liability for civil wrong separately from criminal wrong. Such case is tried based on the civil burden of proof- a preponderance of the evidence. On the contrary,
There are two types of law in the U.S. judicial system: criminal law and civil law. Civil law is considered as a law that is designed to address private wrongs. “A private citizen who believes that he or she has been injured in some way by another may sue that party for damages” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2013). Civil law as stated before is the settling of disputes between private citizens since many disagreements can arise concerning anything from property, contracts, and even personal injuries. Therefore, civil laws can provide citizens remedies for the individuals who are considered harmed by another. These cases are divided into four categories: torts, property, contracts, and family law. Each one of these categories are broken down into specifics and are handle in a variety of ways.