{"id":3091,"date":"2009-01-03T17:45:45","date_gmt":"2009-01-03T22:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3091"},"modified":"2009-01-03T20:38:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T01:38:45","slug":"favorite-law-movies-a-civil-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/01\/favorite-law-movies-a-civil-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Favorite Law Movies: A Civil Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There are many great law-related movies, but the one that has special resonance for me is A Civil Action<\/em> (1997).\u00a0 In fact, back when I taught Civil Procedure, I required students to watch the film, and we had some really terrific class discussions about it.\u00a0 The plot\u00a0centers on a lawsuit brought by a group of residents of Woburn, Massachusetts, against several industrial polluters.\u00a0 At the heart of the film is the confrontation between an up-and-coming plaintiffs’ lawyer played by John Travolta and a grizzled, big-firm defense lawyer played by Robert Duvall.\u00a0 The Duvall character seems an avatar of the amoral corporate lawyer, whereas the\u00a0moral status of the Travolta character seems more uncertain and may evolve over the course of the movie.<\/p>\n

Both actors deliver deeply engaging\u00a0performances, as do several other top-flight character actors in supporting roles.\u00a0 (James Gandolfini is especially good as a blue-collar employee of one of the defendants who must decide whether or not to cooperate with the plaintiffs’ lawyer; he doesn’t have many lines, but he exudes this barely subdued rage, looking as if he would like nothing more than to punch somebody out, if only he could\u00a0decide at whom he should really be angry.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, in addition to great acting and a compelling story, there are lots of other reasons\u00a0this movie really works for me.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For one thing, environmental litigation is what I myself was\u00a0doing as a lawyer\u00a0in 1997 (when the movie came out), and who can resist a glamorized, Hollywood version of one’s own life?\u00a0\u00a0(Perhaps this also helps to account for the enduring fascination\u00a0with\u00a0The Paper Chase <\/em>among law students and law professors.)\u00a0 Yet, though glamorized in some respects, the depiction of complex environmental litigation in\u00a0A Civil Action<\/em>\u00a0is accurate enough that I consistently found it to be a good way to begin a discussion with students about important problems\u00a0in the American civil litigation system (e.g., lawyer-client conflicts of interest, plaintiff-defendant resource imbalances,\u00a0and excessive cost).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, what I like most about the movie is its dramatization of the profound\u00a0gap between\u00a0what the lawyers and court system are\u00a0willing and able to provide and what the victims of great human tragedy most desperately want.\u00a0 At first, we see the Woburn victims — families who lost children to cancer — only through Travolta’s eyes.\u00a0 The negative stereotype is that plaintiffs’ lawyers see victims only as a meal ticket.\u00a0 For the Travolta character, though, I think he sees his clients less from the standpoint of a financial payoff, and more as a way to get the ego-gratification that comes from playing David to a corporate Goliath.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In any event,\u00a0the plaintiffs’ lawyer\u00a0seems to have no\u00a0empathy for the terrible grief of his clients; indeed, he expressly disclaims any such emotional response by a lawyer as counterproductive to the clients’ legal interests — which he equates with maximizing financial gain.\u00a0 Gradually, we, the audience, come to see that the clients are less interested in money than in an explanation of why they lost their loved ones, an apology for wrongdoing, and generally having their basic human digintity recognized by the big corporate and legal actors in the case.\u00a0\u00a0The Travolta character finally seems to get some sense of this by the end of the movie — although there is enough emotional subtlety in\u00a0the production that we do not get an overly obvious epiphany.\u00a0 Still, I think the movie works as a healthy reminder for lawyers and law students of the human needs for healing and respectful treatment that\u00a0lie behind much litigation, and that cannot be met through dollars and cents alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many great law-related movies, but the one that has special resonance for me is A Civil Action (1997).\u00a0 In fact, back when I taught Civil Procedure, I required students to watch the film, and we had some really terrific class discussions about it.\u00a0 The plot\u00a0centers on a lawsuit brought by a group of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture-and-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}