et al. v. W.R. Grace Anne Anderson and Beatrice Foods: 1986 - Taking On Two Giants

The plaintiffs settled with the Unifirst Company, an industrial dry cleaning business, for one million dollars, and they used the settlement money to continue to press their case against both Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace and Company. The case was one of the few in which a small group of private citizens was successful in marshaling the resources necessary to take on a major corporation.

In March of 1986 the first phase of the trial began. In an unusual move, the plaintiffs did not ask for a specific amount in damages, but the trial judge, Walter Jay Skinner, characterized the potential award as "astronomical." In his opening arguments before the jury, Jan Schlictmann, attorney for the plaintiffs, promised to call an array of expert witnesses to the stand who would prove that the chemicals found in the aquifer were "toxic and can destroy cells;" that the companies had knowingly dumped them onto Grace and Beatrice property; and that they later seeped into Woburn's water supply through two nearby wells. Lawyers for Grace and Beatrice argued that while solvents were dumped on company land, the dumping had not been reckless or negligent. Both companies contended that chemicals in the city water supply could have come from a number of other sources in the Woburn area, since the town had been an industrial and manufacturing center since the 1850s. Grace's attorney, Michael Keating, claimed that he would present testimony that the land between Grace's Cryovac Division, which made food packaging equipment, and the city wells lay in such a way that none of the chemicals in question—specifically trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene—could have reached the wells.