Out of the ashes

Still brash, bold and rebellious, the swashbuckling lawyer who took on chemical companies in the tale now known as “A Civil Action” has something to say about the judicial system:

It’s not working.

Jan R. Schlichtmann contends that the arena where he became a hero brings out the worst in people. It turns lawyers into pit bulls, and it shortchanges clients and the public, he says.

 “Our system is not serving the public interest,” he remarks, looking out at the ocean from his Beverly backyard on a sunny afternoon. “Lawyers can’t talk about it for fear it will somehow reflect poorly on their performance.”

Once the subject of a best-selling book and 1998 hit film, “A Civil Action,” Schlichtmann has grown into a kind of legal philosopher. At 56, he seems perfectly relaxed, comfortable in his own skin. He speaks with fervor, like a born-again lawyer, pointing to “Woburn” — his “nickname” for the 1980s contaminated-water case that spawned the book — as a “revelation” about his profession.

Schlichtmann works out of a rustic, albeit comfortably appointed, shed next to his home, situated at the end of a dirt road in the tony Prides Crossing section of Beverly. There is no shingle announcing his practice to alert potential clients. He takes on “projects,” rather than cases, still specializing in environmental-pollution and consumer-rights issues, with the goal, he says, of negotiating reparations before disagreements ever get to court.

These days, though, it is Danversport that commands his attention. He is representing more than 100 owners who lost all or parts of their homes and businesses in a huge explosion a year ago in the middle of the night at an ink-and-paint factory in that waterfront neighborhood of Danvers. Miraculously, no one was killed although about a dozen residents were injured.

One of Schlichtmann’s environmental testers, John Lovatt, happens to live in the neighborhood and agreed to talk to several residents who were frustrated that, with homeowners scattered by the disaster, it was difficult to develop a neighborhood response. A group was formed and a legal trust was created to facilitate an out-of-court settlement with whoever is eventually found responsible for the explosion.

The fee to Schlichtmann, and any other attorneys whose clients join the trust, is one-third of the settlement — the same as it would be were an award obtained through a lawsuit decided in court. With a trust, however, some court expenses are saved and the atmosphere is more cooperative than confrontational.

W. Paul Needham, a Boston-based lawyer representing CAI, an owner of the factory that exploded, is amazed at the level of cooperation between the parties.

“It’s unusual,” he comments. “You have a trust that hasn’t filed suit. Everybody’s talking to everybody else, trying to work things out.”

Ed Sanborn, 42, co-founder of the Danversport group Safe Area For Everyone — or SAFE — is equally impressed with Schlichtmann.

“Jan tells a good story of lessons he’s learned,” says Sanborn. “He’s helped a lot. He brings a lot of cachet to media contacts. Together, we’re much more effective to draw attention to the issue [of safety at industrial plants]. Businesses and residents are involved to make sure regulations are reviewed and businesses held accountable.”

‘Everything changed’

The lessons Schlichtmann has learned are predominantly from the Woburn case. “It’s been burned into my soul,” the lawyer says.

The litigation, which involved the cancer deaths of several children that were linked to contaminated drinking water, won $8 million for the victims and eventually resulted in a $68 million cleanup of the toxic site.

But the complicated and controversial lawsuit, with its scores of expert witnesses, left Schlichtmann — portrayed by John Travolta in the film — bankrupt and disillusioned. He ultimately decided to quit the legal profession.

“I was only seeing the pain and failure,” he recalls of his move to Hawaii for a few years where he started an energy-efficient lighting company.

But in 1993, unfinished business — a contamination case in Groton — coupled with a love interest drew him back to the East Coast and to his professional calling.

When he and his wife-to-be, Claudia, discovered the stunning Beverly property for sale, he says he envisioned marrying her and having a family there. They wed a few months later and now have three children: Max, 11; Zack, 10; and Sophia, 31/2.

“Everything changed,” he says of the turn his life took. “I began to see that the experience of Woburn was a gift and had taught me a lot. I became conscious of how I looked at my role as a lawyer. I have my ups and downs, but our family and this place is like this tree,” he says pointing to an oak in his backyard, “rooted in the bedrock. Storms come and the tree is on the edge, where I prefer to be, but it’s still rooted in the bedrock.”

‘Jan’s interests’

It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride for Schlichtmann, and some say the bumps he’s experienced have been of his own making.

His newfound approach, unusual for a high-stakes lawyer, has incurred the wrath of some longtime friends and colleagues.

In 2002, he drew some of them in to help him represent three water bottlers who accused Poland Springs of mislabeling its product as natural spring water when it actually was using well water.

According to Schlichtmann, Poland Spring’s parent company, Nestle, offered the bottlers a $39 million settlement, including a review of its water quality and a contribution to environmental causes. There was one stipulation, however: The settlement was to remain confidential so as not to hurt the Maine bottled-water industry.

Schlichtmann’s colleagues balked, pulling out of the case and filing class-action lawsuits across the country. They used confidential information and scuttled the would-be settlement, he says.

One of those lawyers, Garve Ivey of Alabama, says there was no agreement and that Schlichtmann just wanted the quick money the settlement provided.

“Jan wants to settle at all costs,” says Ivey. “He is very self-centered and selfish to the extreme. I was deluded into believing Jan had the interest of the environment and the consumers at heart. I learned quickly that Jan’s interests are Jan’s interests and nobody else’s.”

Subsequently, Ivey says, Schlichtmann persuaded the bottlers to sue some of the attorneys (Ivey was not included), asserting that the lawyers had neglected to represent them by pursuing the larger class-actions without their clients’ approval.

In 2006, a Maine jury agreed and ordered the prominent Seattle law firm Hagens, Berman, Sobol, Shapiro, which has offices in Cambridge, to pay the bottlers $10.5 million for breach of duty.

Schlichtmann says he was dumbfounded by his colleagues’ violation of the profession’s “prime directive” to serve the client. “It was completely distressing. This is an example of how destructive the system is. My colleagues were laboring under a misconception.”

And, no, he’s not trading in lawsuits to gain cooperation, Schlichtmann emphasizes.

“That’s not what I’m doing. When you’re engaged in conflict, the first thing you lose is the truth. You have to start lying to yourself and others: ‘I am right; you are wrong.’ And the legal system institutionalizes and encourages the attitude.”

While espousing the benefits of a non-litigious approach, however, he appears to have taken a different tack in at least one of his cases.

Schlichtmann has been in court fighting with the Cadle Co. of Ohio for about a dozen years since that company purchased some of his debt in the midst of his filing for bankruptcy following the Woburn contamination case. Each side has sued and countersued over the debt and its disposition, with Schlichtmann also representing other parties claiming abusive practices by Cadle.

The latest decision was issued on Sept. 25, when U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Somma in Boston ruled against Schlichtmann’s effort to have the debt collection firm sanctioned for its tactics.

Last January, meanwhile, the state’s highest court backed a lower court when it ruled that Schlichtmann’s position that his website and its treatises slamming Cadle were meant to warn the public were actually “self-serving.” (Schlichtmann subsequently shut down the website.)

And in March, a Superior Court backed the state’s Division of Banks’ denial of a license to operate in Massachusetts for Cadle, citing the company’s lack of integrity.

‘Lies that are killing us’

There is no denying that Schlichtmann has had an impact.

Where he at one time attempted to escape the legacy of “Woburn,” today he embraces it at every opportunity. Called a landmark case by legal eagles, it has been required reading in law school classes for years and has even been used in a geology class at Iowa State University.

Schlichtmann gets out the word about his work and touts his celebrity background through several websites, such as A Civil Action Center, and via Civil Action Radio, which offers audio and video podcasts of Schlichtmann’s interviews with attorneys.

As if to discourage any skeptics, Schlichtmann expounds on the bigger picture put into focus for him by the Woburn case.

“It’s a parable for our times,” he says, “how we’re treating ourselves and our earth. It is the lies that are killing us, not the toxic waste. Toxic waste is just a manifestation of our lies — that another doesn’t matter, community doesn’t matter; only profit matters. It doesn’t matter what I do with my waste. The lies that we use to justify the actions that we take are poisoning us.”

Patty Morin Fitzgerald is a freelance writer. She can be contacted at pmfitzg@comcast.net.