In the movie, A Civil Action, the story follows a case from back in the day called Anderson vs. Cryovac. The case was conducted in a federal courthouse, John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, which is located in Boston Massachusetts. The case lasted about 2 months, September 3rd to November 5th, in 1986. The lawsuit was underlining the toxic contamination of groundwater in Woburn, Massachusetts. The prosecutors were Anne Anderson and various other families from Woburn, Massachusetts. The defendants associated with this case, included Beatrice Foods, Cryovac and UniFirst. The prosecution team sued the defendants for the causing contaminated water and a cancer cluster in their town. The main source of contamination was the tannery owned …show more content…
The four major acts and laws made were the Clean Water Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act(CERCLA), The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), and Hazardous Ranking System(HRS). The Clean Water Act is to renovate and maintain the nation's water by averting point and nonpoint pollution sources. In integration, this act does not address groundwater contamination directly because that is something addressed in a different act. This act establishes the rudimentary standards for surface water. This act was made in 1948 but changed drastically in the 1970s. Next, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, also known as CERCLA is fundamentally a tax. CERCLA taxes chemical and petroleum industries. In five years over one billion dollars were accumulated in taxes. Most of that money went towards a trust fund that benefited clean hazardous wastes. This trust fund provides for cleanup, if no party is responsible for the wastes that go into the groundwater. Next, the superfund amendments and reauthorization act fundamentally amended the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act. It also revised the hazardous ranking system. For starters, it inclined the trust from 1.6 billion dollars to 8.5 billion dollars. SARA got the public more involved in the decisions on how to purify waste sites. This act made CERCLA rethink their standards and visually think about and realize whether or not they were still good standards. Also it enlarged the focus of human health. Lastly, hazardous ranking system which is better known as HRS optically analyzes hazardous waste lands decides if it should go on the national priority list(NPL). This system goes and ranks how deplorable a waste land is and puts them on a list to be cleaned immediately. The higher on the list a waste
Jan acknowledges his situation, “The whole idea of lawsuits is to settle, to compel the other side to settle” [1]. In fact, he uses this reasoning to his advantage by demanding a total of 320 million dollars from both companies. The case is drawn out and both businesses stubbornly refuse to take responsibility, Cheeseman arguing that, “These chemicals never reached Wells G and H - we will show that. And they never made anyone sick. We will show that, too” [1] while Fascher, representing Beatrice Foods, explaining that, “Unless you've proven that poisons reached the wells, there's no case” [1].
Barker v. Wingo 407 U.S. 54 (1972) Tomica Brown-Wright Strayer University SOC 205 Society, Law, and Government Dr. Terry Lunsford October 26, 2014 Introduction According to Justia (2014) Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court case that tried the determinations of whether or not the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial for defendants in criminal cases have been violated must be made on a case-by-case basis, and set forth four factors to be considered in the determination the (1) length of delay there isn’t an absolute time limit that is just one factor used in determining whether a speedy trial has been denied.
The CERCLA of life for Lenders 1 The basics The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA is a federal law created in 1980 to facilitate cleanup of contaminated sites and allocate responsibility for payment of cleanup costs. You’ve probably heard of it being called the Superfund. 2 Joint and Several Liability Under CERCLA, Joint and Several liability are considered for Superfund site cleanup and other costs on the part of more than one potentially responsible party (i.e. if there were several owners or users of a site that became contaminated over the years, they could all be considered potentially liable for cleaning up the site.). On behalf of lenders, CERCLA contains what is called Indicia of ownership
White America will always have an advantage over blacks and it will continue to be this way, whether we would like to admit it or not. African Americans had the same capabilities to do anything a white American could, if not better in many circumstances. Unhappy with the hardships that challenged blacks’ freedom throughout their life, enslaved African American, Dred Scott, made a significant impact which eventually changed the views of slavery. Thus, the court ruling of the Dred Scott v. Sanford was established in 1857 which declared that slaves nor black men who were already free could be granted citizenship in the United States (Dred Scott v. Sandford, n.d.). Scott v Sanford court case was created to emphasize the wrongdoings of slave masters by expressing the poorly acts African Americans face while under the Declaration of Independence.
On December 31, 1970, President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act; this bill controls our air pollution. President Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, or the Ocean Dumping Act, on October 21, 1972. This Act regulates the dumping of anything harmful towards marine animals. President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act of 1973 on December 28, 1073; this strengthens the Act and protects many species. Lastly, Nixon proposed the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, which protects the nation’s lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands, and other bodies of water.
The book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr explains the predicament of a lawyer who rejected a case that was very risky and complicated as a personal injury lawyer. Through various legal concepts and terminologies discussed in class, the story details how the judicial system operates. Particularly, the case involves victims of childhood leukemia in the small town of Woburn, Massachusetts, where the city wells have been found to be contaminated with tetrachloroethylene (TCE) — a suspected carcinogen and other industrial byproducts. (Glantz, 1998). Two of the largest corporations, companies names, each with a plant near the wells were accused of being responsible.
(191) Similarly in 1970, President Nixon started a series of four annual messages he sent to congress regarding the basis of his environmental program. The first message sent called for a new comprehensive water quality legislation for wastewater treatment facilities. Another asked for an extension on water quality programs run by the government to all navigable waters and a national enforcement program. (188) Due to these requests, congress enacted the
This kind of risk is often called environmental and social risk in project finance. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations on the air pollution and wastewater that produced by paper and pulp manufacturers. The three mills would shut down if they were not forced to comply with the new regulations. Jaakko Pöyry estimated that the pulp mill would need from $150 million to $200 million to update its devices. However, the expenses incurred to adapt to the new regulation for the paper and tissue mill were unknown.
The Clean Water Act of 1973 The clean water act of the late 1900's was a desperately needed action that would save hundreds of thousands of lives and improve the united states. This act will help shape out the united states and help clean up our big mess. ''Toxic chemicals were discharged from more than 1,900 waterways in all 50 states.'' Said Justin miller from the EPA.
This movie portrays attorneys and litigation process in a negative light. Although Jan Schlichtmann initially rejects the case, he reconsiders his decision after realizing that he is dealing with defendants with “fat wallets”. Anne Anderson and her neighbors only wanted an apology from the corporations and were not interested to obtain financial gains. Having said this, many attorneys rejected the case as they were not seeing any financial settlement. In the movie, Jan states, “a lawyer who shares his client’s pain does his client such a grave disservice, he should have his license to practice law taken away.”
STUDENTS NAME: PROFESSOR: COURSE TITLE: DATE: EPA SHOULD NOT BE DISCOUNTINUED The United States Environmental Agency (EPA) is the agency in the federal government of the United States which deals with the protection of the human health and the environment. It writes and enforces laws based on the laws that are approved and passed in the congress. In Feb this year, abill to abolish the agency was introduced in the congress but due to the following reasons the EPA should not be abolished and discontinued; The agency is charged with the mandate of converting the broad laws passed by the congress into regulations and programs that are easily understood by the public.
It required the Environmental Protection Agency to develop and enforce regulations to protect the public potent air quality which could be hazardous to human health. The Clean Water act established a basic structure for regulating pollution which is discharged into the waters of states in the United States. This act also Gave EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs. As a result of the “Silent Spring,” federal legislations were passed as a call to action to change the habits of humans before we destroy the thing that gives us all
The consequences now is that Canada has 97 lakes, three oceans, and 62 rivers protected in comparison to the 32,000 lakes, and 2.25 million rivers before the bill was passed (Graveline, 2012: 295). This means that Canadian waters are not environmentally protected are therefore easily accessible to companies and the industry as a whole. With the history of oil spills, which is the industry that Bill C-45 is benefiting, the people nearest those population will feel the impacts of this bill the most. The most recent oil spill happened on April, 2011 documented to be the largest land spill in Alberta known as the Little Buffalo oil spill which affected Lubicon Cree community the most (Graveline, 2012:
First, this bill should be opposed because of the ways that the EPA protects air. The EPA has supported and authorized many bills that help preserve the cleanliness of our air. The Environmental Protection Agency website says that their Clean Air Act “authorizes EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants”. Since 1970, this law has allowed the EPA to make sure our air is clean to breathe and advocate for the prevention of air pollution that could be harmful to humans and the environment. However, if the EPA is eradicated, there will be nobody to enforce this Clean Air Act, and therefore no regulation of air pollution, which will be disastrous for not only the environment, but the entire world, which is connected by air currents (so basically everyone on earth breathes the same air).
It was a pleasure reading your response to the Leonard v PepsiCo case. I agree with you on your discussion. According to Melvin Sean, “In order for an offer to have legal effect, the offeror must have an objective intent to contract when making the offer. Generally, the offerer must have a serious intention to become bound by the offer and the terms of the offer must be reasonably certain. (The Legal Environment of Business: A Managerial Approach: Theory to Practice, p 131)